Internet Shopping
- Are You Getting the Best Deals?

The Office of Fair Trading Thinks You Could Save More

There is an assumption that "online" equals "cheap". According to the Office of Fair Trading's recent study into Internet Shopping in the UK online consumers are not always getting the best deal just because they are buying online.

The Office of Fair Trading estimates that web shoppers could save £150 million to £240 million each year and that those purchasing items online are hindered by "unexpected additional charges which are sometimes added in the latter stages of a purchase." The OFT estimates that online shoppers pay and incredible £60 million to £100 million a year in unexpected additional charges.

How do you get around this? The easiest way is to keep your eyes open for the additional charges. These are usually in the form of inflated postage and packaging prices. To save yourself some time review the online merchant's Delivery or Shipping page before proceeding to purchase. They will often display their shipping costs and delivery lead times there. Look for merchants that have a single postage cost regardless of the amount you are purchasing or those that are offering free postage - quite a few do, especially if you are ordering more than £30 worth of goods.

Smart Searching

Another way to get the best deals is to be savvy in your searching. When performing a search use words such as bargain, cheap, sales, clearance, overstock and offer, in combination with what you are looking to buy. For example:

You can be as specific as you like, in the above example we could have typed:

Or you can use an exact match search such as:

which will search for the exact phrase you have used instead of any of the individual words in it.

This gives you laser targeted results with exactly what you are looking for, fewer pages, more items for sale and less rubbish to trawl through.

Unfortunately, you are still not guaranteed to find the best deals as those merchants who understand how search engines work are easily able to engineer their website so as to appear at the top of the search results for deal related searches without in fact offering any good deals at all.

Price Comparison Websites

So a better option is to use price comparison sites which have a goldmine of products and great deals. Price and product comparison sites show you a range of products on offer with the prices (including delivery) all on one page so you can quickly see which deal is cheapest.

Some comparison sites go further by displaying the merchants' delivery lead time, T&C, product specs and so on.

Note that the product and price comparison sites are not in themselves selling the item. Once you have selected the merchant you wish to purchase the item from, the comparison site will send you through to that merchant's website. So you will need to check that site's T&C's, double check the price and delivery times and so on.

By using comparison sites and being creative with your product searching and you will find better deals. Remember to check the online retailer out and make sure they have all of the above trading regulations in order before finalizing the purchase.

Happy bargain hunting.