Online Shopping Is Cheaper

Good article, but did the online price include delivery?

Brilliant article. I'm slowly getting my parents and friends into online shopping. One, we wanted to watch a film but my friend and his girl needed to go shopping. So I opened up their laptop, did the shopping on Tesco's website and recieved the delivery just after the final credits rolled.

Same goes for a rabbit hutch; £150 at an outlet store, £83 on eBay. Ok, not a reliable source of price busting, but still a great deal cheaper.

Including postage in your online buy is very important but have you also considered your petrol/diesel (particularly at the moment)? General depreciation on your vehicle? What about parking fees - very often the amount it ACTUALLY costs you to get to & from the shops will still cost you more - even if you do need it refunded. Plus, the temptation to buy extras while you are out can also be costly...

Online has another distinct advantage too,as a busy workign mum I hate taking my kids shopping, they hate going shopping, and I don't have the time.Online shopping is perfect for me as I can do it when they are asleep and have more quality time to spend with them.As for clothes shopping it is easier to buy for kids as sizes tend to be pretty much standard and you can get some great bargains when looking for cheap childrens clothes.You can also find gift ideas etc which aren't easily available in the high street too.

The very best deals are usually on electrical items. I managed to get a £900 cooker for £750 by buying on line. The irony is, if I had bought it in store, they would have charged me the £900 + Delivery (£20) but buying it on their website, the £750 included delivery!!
I have been buying extensively online since 1999, and NOT ONCE have I been ripped off. Choose your retailers carefully, and you should be fine.
MK

I have been an avid on-line shopper for a good few years and have had only one bad experience in hundreds of transactions. But the curse of on-line shopping for me is delivery.

If you’re willing to pay (a lot) extra you can sometimes arrange for the goods to be delivered on a given day in a given time slot. The operative word here is ‘sometimes’. Where you can’t arrange this you are at the mercy of the carrier who often can’t even promise to deliver your goods on a particular day, let alone a time slot within a day. So even if you can second-guess the delivery date you’re still faced with a whole day confined to the house within earshot of the front door bell. I’ve actually missed a carrier whilst in the garden and not able to get to the door within the few seconds before he posts the dreaded ‘called but you were out’ notice through the letterbox.

As a widower I don’t have a second person who can cover the front door whilst I’m (1) out (2) in the shower, or even, dare I say it, (3) having a pee. My house is on a corner and doesn’t benefit from an obvious neighbour who can take in a parcel for me.

As on-line shopping evolves there needs to be a more formalistic approach to the delivery problem – perhaps local drop-off points where you can collect from. I’m not really sure of the answer but I am sure of the problem.

Nothing new here I have been shopping online for years saved thousands literally over the years even going to main retailers sites you can get a bargain and backup if things go wrong I even have my 70 yr old mum doing it and loving bargains!
latest 2 X 1gb memory sticks for my girls homework £9.16 delivered retailers anything between 6.99 and 15.99 each!

cheap cheap...we all want it cheaper, so cheap that we dont care if the high street shops go bust and the staff are all made unemployed, so cheap that the town centres then die away because there are no shops or shoppers, so cheap that we have kids in the third world sewing on beads to our fashionable sweaters instead of going to school, so cheap that we no longer buy British because it costs too much to pay some one a living wage in the 1st world so now we exploit the 3rd (and have lost all of our trades and industries for our younger generation to earn their living by)....oh I could go on and on but I havent had my coffee yet and well it makes me grumpy.

Hi everyone, thanks for your comments so far. Some of them contain great tips! Just to be clear, all the online prices I quoted in the article above did include delivery, as I state in the section immediately before the results of my 'investigation' :)

i buy nearly everything on ebay, i have just purchased a 32 inch television from hughesbros-sales, an ebay shop, for £300 with free delivery and i recieved it 2 days after buying it. i dont think i could have got that anywhere else cheaper or faster. last christmas i halved the cost of what i usualy spend by using ebay and i didnt have to rush around the busy shops as its delivered direct to my door. thank goodness for ebay.

abe.co.uk is also a good place for finding that book you have been searching for. It is similar to Amazon's 'new and used' section

i've been doing this for years. i have saved about £200-£300 for 40" LCD screens, brand new. Direct from a warehouse instead of a salesmans comission. Delivery is free/included and direct to the door. all you need is patience. if your worried about online security, look for two things to ensure a legit site when PAYING. One is the extra s that appears in the httpS:// and the second is the small padlock at the bottom right hand corner of your internet browser! Enjoy! PS: i use google to compare prices across the board. guarnteed cheapest possible price!

Quote"cheap cheap...we all want it cheaper, so cheap that we dont care if the high street shops go bust and the staff are all made unemployed, so cheap that the town centres then die away because there are no shops or shoppers, so cheap that we have kids in the third world sewing on beads to our fashionable sweaters instead of going to school, so cheap that we no longer buy British because it costs too much to pay some one a living wage in the 1st world so now we exploit the 3rd (and have lost all of our trades and industries for our younger generation to earn their living by)....oh I could go on and on but I havent had my coffee yet and well it makes me grumpy"

This i8s very true, but in my case, I was fulltime caring for my wife the past 17 years, she passed away some 7 weeks ago, leaving me with virtually no income as the majority of our income was unfortunately from her disabilty benefits, and I have a severe spinal problem due to the years of lifting and handling her, leaving me unable to go back to to my old butchery managers job, or indeed any job at all.

For me, I don't have the privilege of being generous with my money, I would asume many other Fools are in the same situation. Having said that some people who easily can afford to pay that little more, often don't, perhaps they have the onus upon them to support the retail market? Not all of us do.

I doubt I'll be around to go Na, nahnah, nahnah nah! When all the highstreet shops are closed. We are now down to 3 jewellers from 6 or 7. Eight assorted shops closed in the last 12 months.
Thanks for that further nail in our coffins. Having been in jewellery foe a scant 13 years prior to retirement
On the one hand.. I have had chance to see a customer cross the road to buy an identical for £100 more because that was his figure AND on the other hand smirk at the quality of the online purchases of jewellery and explain to customers why they cannot earily be made 5-10 sizes bigger/smaller.

Erroneous figures given there as regards to costs.
Its not really amazing that you have missed out the postage cost, everyone does when they look at these prices.
Oh whoopee I saved £5 over a retail shop, what I forgot to mention was the postage price of £6.

Note to LateDeveloper - the article includes postage costs - see the fourth paragraph after the sub head, "The Big Experiment." which alludes to the point I want to make about online shopping - take a moment to READ everything, including the Terms & Conditions - rather than just checking the box to say you agree to them. (espcially for high cost items). The T&C often give you an idea if the seller is a good bet or not, and will let you know if there's recourse if something goes wrong.

- Pay a bit more for a retailer you know - eg, use Amazon instead of some unknown. You're better protected. It's not all about price.

- Be careful of retailers based in countries other than the UK. You may be stung for VAT on the way in - which makes your cheap purchase less of a bargain. (especially so for electronic goods bought on ebay shops based in HK - often with misleading names that suggest they're based in the UK).

- I agree wholeheartedly with the delivery problem. My household are always at work when deliveries are made - local drop off points for deliveries are sorely needed.

hooray for internet shopping.

A History Of Modern Britain (paperback), by Andrew Marr.
£3.68 at Tesco's or £3.50 if you go for the 2 for 7 quid!

Slightly off the subject but a point I'd like to make, as my sons own and run one of the online perfume stores: if stuff goes missing in transit, please don't have a go at the retailer! It's the fault of Royal Mail! Have you ever had your gas bill go astray in the post? Probably never. Yet a good percentage of valuable mail "disappears" in transit and, to put it bluntly, that's because it's stolen. The culprits? A no-brainer, I think.

if stuff goes missing in transit, please don't have a go at the retailer!

But online retailers are legally obliged to take responsibility for safe delivery of the goods, however they choose to send them. The sensible approach from the retailer's point of view is to use insured delivery.

Yep, online shopping does tend to be cheapest! I usually buy a lot from the internet. I recently bought a Sony Hi-8 camcorder for £75 and it works great! I had to return the camcorder I had bought to the shop, because it didn't do what I told the salesman I wanted it to do - which was see in the dark, because I enjoy ghost-hunting! He assured me it would, but it was rubbish! I returned it, got back my £220 and saved a lot on the Sony, which is the best one for it's NightshotPlus function.

Dvds, books, games, etc are ALL cheaper online... it's worth searching

You compare prices for Oxford and Regent Street!!! that's not the real world now is it!!? That's tourist values, try somewhere like Leeds or Newport Gwent!
I live in the mountains of South Wales 3/4 mile down a dirt track through locked gates.. so no parcel deliveries!! My "depository" post office is 8 1/2 miles away so there's a certain amount of fuel use unless I'm going in for fuel that is nearby.
However, shopping online gives me access to more obscure items that might not be found on my local high street.
Reasonable article though, please guys we don't all live in London.. be a little more real.

We used to have a lovely postman, always smiling and happy to stop and chat. I found out why he was so happy after I received a visit from Royal Mails fraud investigation team. They'd found a package at his home address which should have been delivered to me. It seems that our lovely postie was helping himself to our magazines and high value items. Luckily we were never out of pocket as each retailer and magazine company had either replaced the missing item or offered a full refund. It has made me slightly more wary of ordering over the phone/internet, but I make sure that I deal with sellers who are prepared to give good customer service if things go wrong.

An interesting article but there are some points I'd like to make. Firstly, I work for on of the bookshops mentioned and online sales are killing us. We get complaints all the time about slow deliveries, lack of price match etc when actually it's a competely separate entity to us over which we have no control or input. Secondly, if you want the boom straight away or in time for a special occasion we can guarantee that if it's on our shelves but online stores can't and often leave customers disappointed or let down when it doesn't arrive in store on time meaning they won't shop with us on the high street. Furthermore, in addition to all the things you've mentioned like rent, lighting etc when you come in store you are getting the benefit of our book knowledge and expertise - we can recommend books for yiu, tell you about new editions etc and give you much better service than an online store. We also have great offers in-store as well - half price, 3 for 2, money off - which often matches or exceeds online. Next time you're buying a book online think about all this because potentially in a few years time you won't have high street bookstores and you will lose the knowledge, advice and expertise of booksellers for good.

I am a trustee of a book and gift shop and a cafe. Any items that stick are being got rid of via the net.
My comments on the controversy are these.
We recently bought a microwave oven for the shop via the internet. It sparked and had to be returned. This took weeks, meanwhile we had to manage with the ones we had.
As, mentioned already, try bargaining with shops. Tell them how cheaply you can buy on the internet and see if they will match the price.
Special offers are available to retailers on books. Recently,we offered a quality book at £8 instead of the £16 posted price. No chance on the internet! We get some truly amazing bargains from publishers and are happy to pass these on so a quick glance at quoted prices retail and on the internet are not always what can actually be achieved.
Regarding the matter of the dying of the high street, The more the local shops close, the more the internet service will deteriorate! It's no good talking about competition keeping the internet suppliers keen, just compare banks or utility companies. All the same, all (very) poor service.
High street shops often close because rents and rates are extortionate. Councils bear responsibility for much of this. Bring down the rents and rates and more high street shops will blossom.
What about the nation's health? We are accused of being couch potatoes but at least shopping provides exercise and drives people out and off the couch!
Competition is good and I am in favour of both net and retail. I think both have an important part to play in our society. We shoppers should look to the strengths of each and choose accordingly.