What can I do if an online company has no contact details on its site?

I placed an order for £196 with an online company called Wantglasses on 7 December last year. The company said delivery time was no more than 28 days.

I have sent three emails enquiring as to the status of this order but I cannot get a reply or find a phone number that works.

The address for the company is a Post Office box in Amersham. I have successfully bought goods from the company in the past but I am concerned because I am getting no response to the emails I have sent them.
Doreen Martin

This company is selling prescription glasses and on the website says it "grew from a high-street optician’s shop and is run by fully qualified optometrists, dispensing opticians and lab technicians. We have an on-site laboratory and our friendly, knowledgeable staff are available to assist you by phone or email".

How they could do this by phone baffles us as we couldn’t find a number on the website for this company. There is no geographical address listed.

Companies trading with UK consumers have to display this information clearly on their websites. This was clearly stated under the Ecommerce regulations. This law also states that a PO Box address is unlikely to be considered as a fulfilment of this requirement.

We did a bit of investigation and found the company is still active on Companies House. We also found a forum with a number of complaints about non-delivery.

This gave us two different phone numbers and the email address of Roger Biddlecombe who is listed as a director of this company.

Both the phone numbers were unavailable, but we did find an email address for Mr Biddlecombe.

He received our email and called us back and we explained the problem of the missing order to him. We have also pointed out that there is no way anyone can easily get hold of the company with only a PO Box for an address.

The ‘call us’ section on the website provided no phone numbers. While there is no legal requirement for Wantglasses to provide a telephone number, it seems odd that this is missing.

The phone number on the invoice that Mrs Martin gave us was not in service. Mr Biddlecombe said he would investigate the matter and we will follow up the problem.