A Consuming Experience: online shopping

Showing posts with label online shopping. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Online shopping - get refund of delivery charges too

If as an EU consumer you order goods from an EU website or indeed by mail order or telephone sales, and you decide you don't want it, under the EU Distance Selling Directive you are entitled to return it and get back the price you paid - as long as within 7 days after receipt you tell the retailer / supplier / vendor that you don't want it (with some exceptions, e.g. you can't return perishable goods like food or cut flowers, or travel-related things like plane tickets).

You have to cancel (i.e. exercise your withdrawal rights) within that time period in writing, but email to their official email address is fine.

Out-law now reports that the European Court of Justice has recently said in the Handelsgesellschaft Heinrich Heine case that not only do you have the right to get the full purchase price back, you are also entitled to a refund of the delivery charge, postage costs, courier fee or whatever they've called it. I.e. what they charged you for the original sending of the goods to you.

What it costs you to post or courier back the goods to the seller is a different matter. It's up to your home country's laws whether you can get a refund for your costs of returning the goods.

In the UK, the seller doesn't have to refund you for return postage, although some decent retailers do it for the sake of customer goodwill and brand reputation (most will refund your expenses for the return, e.g. your postage costs, only if there was something wrong with the product).

So, consumers unite - if an online shopping website doesn't refund you for the original delivery costs, demand it! (But be prepared to pay the full return costs - though they can't charge you an admin fee or restocking charge).

Also note:

you can cancel within a "cooling off period" of 7 working days beginning with the day after the day on which you receive the goods; most retailers tell you it's just "7 days", which is wrong, and probably designed to make consumers think it's too late to return something when it isn't
if the seller doesn't give you certain info required by law, you have even longer than that to cancel. Most people don't know this. It could even be as long as 3 months and 7 working days after receipt!
but the cancellation right doesn't apply to e.g. downloads of software, movies or music
if you cancel you obviously have to look after the goods properly (take "reasonable care" of them) till they are collected or you return them, but they don't have to be returned unopened. Equally obviously, you have to package them sensibly so they don't get damaged in the post, and you may have to pay for them or get sued if you didn't look after them or pack them properly and they get damaged etc.
strictly, it seems you can even make the seller collect the goods from you if their original contract didn't say you have to return the goods if you cancel! (most website terms will, of course) - but it's safest to return them, reasonably well packaged, even though you have to pay the return costs, as then you're no longer responsible for the goods
if there's something wrong with the goods, you still have your normal consumer rights e.g. if they're faulty or defective and the fault only shows up after the 7 working days, and they'll have to pay for your full return costs then (especially if the fault cropped up in the first 6 months after you bought it)
the retailer has to reimburse you within 30 days beginning with the day on which you cancelled in writing. Yes, even if they haven't received the goods back yet
if the seller tries to say you can't get a refund unless you've returned the goods within X days, actually they shouldn't. It's the cooling off period that counts. See the OFT guide referred to below.

More info:

UK OFT guide for businesses on distance selling - useful for consumers too in terms of what retailers are and aren't allowed to do.
EU Distance Selling Directive
UK Consumer (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 and amendments

All this is of course only general info, and up to date only at the date of this post; this isn't legal advice etc, and you ought to consult a suitably qualified lawyer about your own situation if you have an issue.

Wednesday, 3 March 2010

Consumer tips when shopping: your rights

Not tech-only, but helpful and not everyone knows these tips, which apply to shopping in person and for item 4 online or by mail order or telephone - from the good ol' UK BIS, so mostly relevant to UK consumers only, I've added the bits in italics:

1. Not my style – some might be surprised to learn that you do not have a right to a refund if you simply decide you don’t like what you have bought.

2. Six month rule - if you make a claim for a repair or replacement of faulty goods within six months of purchase it’s actually up to the retailer to prove that the goods were not faulty when sold to you. [Note: this may not help if you're buying from outside the EU, or indeed possibly even the UK.]

3. No receipt required - you do not need a receipt to obtain a refund for faulty goods. However, you may be required to show proof of purchase with a credit card slip, bank statement or cheque stub.

4. Online is fine - if you buy goods on the Internet you also have the right to a seven working-day ‘cooling off’ period from the date you receive the goods, with the right to a full refund regardless of the reason for return. [Note: this applies to phone orders or mail order too, but it only works when you're buying from a retailer in the UK or EU. You need to tell the seller within 7 days of receipt that you want to return the goods, but you don't actually have to return the goods within 7 days, as long as you do return them ASAP and certainly within 30 days, safest to take that as 30 days after the order or at most 30 days after receipt. Buying from outside the EU e.g. the US is another matter, and much, much riskier for EU consumers - I'm planning a different blog post on that as I've been burned myself.]

5. Returning it to the retailer - when you buy goods, your contract is with the retailer not the manufacturer and you should always go back to the retailer to make a claim.

6. Fit for purpose - the goods you buy from a retailer should be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. If they are not, you are legally entitled to make a claim for a refund, repair or replacement. [Again, you will likely encounter problems in practice if you're buying online from outside the EU, e.g. the USA, even if the goods are faulty.]

7. Act quickly - if goods are faulty and you wish to claim a full refund you must return the goods to the retailer within a reasonable period of time.

8. Smarter sales shopping - you are not entitled to a refund on sale goods if you were made aware by the retailer that the goods were faulty or if the fault was obvious. Also, if you change your mind about liking the goods you aren’t entitled to a refund.

9. Nearly new –you have similar rights to a refund, repair or replacement as you do for new goods but remember that the law doesn’t expect second goods to be of the same quality as new ones.

10. Stick up for your rights – if the retailer is failing to acknowledge or respond to your consumer rights, in the England and Wales, you can file a claim (under £5,000) with the small claims court.

See further this info on your rights when shopping online. For help with problems - Consumer Direct.

Saturday, 13 February 2010

Online shopping: delivery - the last mile is still an issue, are solutions in sight?

I've gone on and on for ages about one big problem with internet shopping - having to be home to receive the delivery.

One advantage of Amazon Marketplace, which enables independent retailers to sell their goods via Amazon, is that once Amazon have verified a customer and their alternative addresses e.g. their workplace, orders from a Marketplace seller can be delivered to the customer's address registered with Amazon if the consumer wishes - including the office.

Unsurprisingly, the Interactive Media in Retail Group, a UK trade body for e-retailers, recently said they'd found that:

"the major area for parcel delivery businesses to work on is giving consumers a day or time as to when they will receive their goods, rather than them having to guess when they will come… when you ask consumers what they want to make deliveries more convenient, nearly eight out of ten are looking for a specific delivery day, and seven out of ten are looking for a time delivery".

So it's good that UK parcel carrier DPD have developed systems to enable them to offer 1-hour windows for home deliveries to customers of retailers like Three, Dixons Direct and iwantoneofthose.com:

"Shoppers who buy from retailers shipping with DPD can receive a free SMS or email giving them a precise one hour window in which the driver will arrive. And, if the recipient of the SMS knows that they won’t be in to sign for the package, they can reply and arrange for DPD to deliver on a more convenient date."

To me, that's still not good enough - a 1-hour window is no use if it's not a window of the consumer's choice - I'd rather a 2 or 3 hour window I could pick when I know I'm going to be in. Having to arrange with work etc to be at home for a 1-hour window I can't control isn't much better than having to take half a day or a whole day off.

Back in December 2009 startup Shutl launched to much fanfare at LeWeb09 and supposedly, by connecting retailers with local same-day courier companies, gives online shoppers the choice of receiving delivery:

"within 90 minutes of purchase or

a one-hour time window of consumer's choice", apparently at almost any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Now that sounds much better from a consumer viewpoint. However, they say they're only trialling in London currently and, unlike DPD, haven't announced which retailers are using them, which suggests it's not many. The idea is great but they'd better get a move on…

It's interesting that according to IMRG and Internet Retailing, health and beauty retailer Boots is considering letting other pure play and multi-channel retailers use Boots' 2600 stores as pick-up points for their online shopping customers. Much more convenient to be able to collect your order from the Boots store nearest your work or home, e.g. at the weekend. (And Argos, anyone?)

However, I'm surprised that credit card companies haven't reached deals to "register" work addresses so that consumers can use their credit cards to get orders delivered to their offices, or that supermarkets like Tesco's which do offer short delivery windows of the customer's choice haven't made arrangements with retailers to make their deliveries for them (as I've suggested before).

Things still have too far to go on the delivery front, in my view. Online shopping has grown and grown, but it still has much potential, and it's about time fulfilment channels were sorted out properly to enable that potential to be met.

Thursday, 5 March 2009

How to save money on online orders: diginomics

£££ €€€ $$$ !!!

“Just say no!”

Less cryptically, there’s a simple tip embodied in that statement which may help you save money when you order over the internet. And certainly in these *credit crunch times of economic recession, so many things are so expensive that every penny or cent (or euro!) can make a difference.

It’s a truism that sellers want to charge you the maximum they can - so they’ll try to make you pay the most that you’re willing to pay. It’s simple market economics, supply and demand.

Which, taken to extremes, means that suppliers will charge different customers a different price for the exact same product (or charge the same customer a different price at different times) - if they can figure out that the customer is willing to pay more for it.

And, with the power of the Web / internet, they can figure that out, because online they can compute things very quickly, live, in real time.

This differential pricing is just an application of diginomics, indeed a very sensible application as far as the vendor is concerned, because it helps them make the most money that they can - and, after all, it’s their profits, their bottom line, that they really care the most about.

So, what can we poor consumers do? Why, figure them out, and use their tactics to our own advantage, of course!

Below is a suggested counter-strategy for consumers when shopping over the Net.

Now note that this doesn’t work with all (or indeed many) websites, but only with the ones who apply differential pricing to different customers or at different stages of the shopping / ordering process, it really can make a difference. An example of a site which does this is business cards site VistaPrint.

Also, note that a site could apply different types of discounts at different times, as they change their pricing strategies, so you'll need to keep trying at different times.

With those points in mind, here are the suggested steps:

First, check the original prices. In the shoppingcart, at the start add everything you’re planning to buy, in the quantities you ultimately want.
At the end, just before you have to enter your credit card details or confirm anything that makes your order irreversible (e.g. if you have stored credit card details on that site – not a good idea for security reasons even if it’s convenient), just tot it all up, including shipping / delivery charges. Make sure you’ve got a note of the price per item of each kind.
But then don’t buy anything – instead of completing the order make sure you cancel everything, empty your basket etc. (And don’t blame me if you don’t, you have to watch it all very carefully)!
Now, go back and start again. This time, make sure that, even if you want to buy several of the same item, or some other kind of multiple order (e.g. renew a domain name for 2 years instead of 1), you start out with an empty cart and then add the very minimum you can. In other words, reduce the quantity to 1 item (or 1 year, etc) even if they defaulted you to 2 or you really wanted to buy 5, and so on. And add just 1 product in the shoppingbasket to begin with.
Then carry on with the ordering process, and check if at subsequent stages they come up with offers of discounts for multiple items – or discount on any other items – or free or cheaper postage costs. That kind of thing.
But, just keep saying “No” to the various offers, and see whether the special offers get better and better at later stages (obviously, make sure you keep track of the price per unit of the same type of goods at each stage so that you can compare them; and if an offer goes away as you proceed, make a note of the last stage when the offer is available).
And again, at the end, just before you commit yourself to the order, cancel everything and empty your cart.
You may need to repeat the process but just add different quantities or different products a different stages just to see if it makes a difference to the ultimate unit price per item (or rather the whole basket of goods that you really want, in the quantities of each kind of goods that you want, including shipping costs). Just experiment, use trial & error etc, but again make sure you don't commit yourself to a purchase yet.
Now, after all your tests, you can start shopping again - but this time you know exactly what offers will be made at what stage, and you can now increase the quantities in your shoppingcart at the right time, and also maybe add different “related” products to your basket if they’re offered at a better price – i.e. where, if you ordered that amount or those products at the very first stage when you added things to your basket, the item would be at a higher price. And you can finalise your order. (Do make your definitive purchase soon after your testing, because as mentioned the shopping sites do change their offers and pricing techniques from time to time, so what worked best one day to give you the best prices on one particular aggregate shopping basket may not work another day.)

And that’s it.

If you found that this tip worked for you, please leave a comment saying so, and list the names / Web addresses of theonline shopping sites it worked for!

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Online shopping: delivery problems cost UK economy >£1 billion a year

I've banged on before about the horlicks that is "delivery" of products bought through internet shopping in the UK, and how credit card companies could help but mostly don't. It's one of my major wishlist items given how much I buy stuff over the Web - I've been doing "home shopping" since the days of mere telephone ordering!

If proof were needed that home delivery isn't working properly, European web retailing price comparison service Kelkoo (now owned by Yahoo!) recently reported on their survey of 13,000 online shoppers which found that "The economy is losing a staggering £1.6 billion each year in lost time as workers take an average of 1.5 days off work to wait for deliveries" of their ordered goods. 45% of those surveyed had taken time off work to wait for a delivery. Yes, that's over a billion quid that delivery issues are costing the national economy, every year.

"Coupled with the frustrations (for both employees and employers) of time taken off work, non-delivery is another major concern with 81% of respondents buying something online only for it not to arrive. The next biggest frustrations were the total costs not being clear upfront (16%), deliveries not arriving in good condition (16%) and late deliveries (10%). Importantly for retailers, 94% of people said they would be unlikely to place further orders with a retailer that failed to deliver." (my emphasis)

Of course the point of Kelkoo's survey was to help plug their own shopping comparison site - "On Kelkoo we highlight IDIS retailers upfront and delivery costs are included in prices to avoid the frustrations of hidden costs" (they point out that the "IDIS (Internet Delivery is Safe)" badge means "that the retailer offers a good choice of delivery times and has good options in place in case of non-delivery").

But still, I'm delighted that someone has actually taken the trouble to get the hard numbers to prove what most of us consumers have known all along - service shouldn't just grind to a halt when the sale is clinched, e-tailers have to follow through with proper "order fulfilment" and, yes, post-sales customer service too.

C'mon, you web shopping e-commerce / e-shopping sites, for your own sake if not for the reputation and credibility of electronic commerce - if you want consumers to keep buying from you, sort out your delivery! I'd love it if the government were to pass a law where the retailer responsible had to automatically pay the shopper £X for every hour that a delivery was late, with interest and fines if that's not paid within 2 weeks. Heck, why not extend that requirement to utility companies that citizens (read juicy, juicy voters) have to wait in for, too? Well, I can dream...

(Via IMRG)

Saturday, 17 November 2007

Shopping: credit card, not PayPal

The quickie

If UK consumers buy goods or services using a UK credit card, and they have a valid claim against the seller for a refund or reimbursement etc due to the seller's breach of contract or misrepresentation (defective products, lying about the features etc), there's good news - they can now also claim against the credit card company, even if they bought the goods or services outside the UK, e.g. from an online vendor or while travelling.

It's obviously very handy to be able to go against your credit card issuer if there's a problem and the original seller is now bankrupt, or won't answer your emails or return your phone calls.

The long & slow

This case has been widely reported, but it's worth a reminder. A few weeks back the top judges in the UK, the House of Lords, unanimously ruled that if UK consumers use a credit card to buy goods or services from a non-UK supplier, e.g. internet shopping from a foreign online vendor or while abroad on holiday outside the UK, they are still protected under section 75 of the UK Consumer Credit Act.

Section's 75 magic for us consumers is that it provides a kind of "guarantee". If you paid by credit card and the cash price of the goods or services you bought is over £100 (but not more than £30,000), and the seller was in breach of contract or guilty of a misrepresentation - e.g. they delivered the wrong things or nothing at all, or the stuff was duff, or they got you to buy the goods or services by misleading you about them, etc - then, if the seller has gone bust or is obstructive, you can go against your credit card company instead to get your money back, or compensation and the like. The credit card issuer is equally responsible along with your supplier, wherever the supplier is based.

The big high street banks had tried to argue that this protection only extends to domestic purchases, i.e. UK consumers buying goods or services in the UK, but the good ol' Office of Fair Trading took the fight all the way up to the Lords, who said no, that's not so - it covers consumers with UK credit agreements, whether they ordered from a UK shop or a foreign (that's "non-UK" if you're not a Brit) supplier.

So the tip is this: whether you're buying in person in the UK or travelling overseas, or whether you like to buy over the phone or the Web and you order from a UK or a non-UK website over the internet, if you're paying for something that's within the price band of over £100 but not more than £30,000 then, all other things being equal, you should be better off paying with a credit card rather than cash or PayPal etc - because then you get the card company's "guarantee" or "insurance", as long as it's a credit card from a UK credit card company that is (and if you're also in the UK. I've no idea what the position is if a non-UK resident uses a card issued by a UK credit card company!).

One gotcha to note: this protection only applies if you use a "real" credit card, NOT a charge card like many Amex cards where you have to pay off the whole balance every month. If you have a real credit card, where you can make a minimum payment of less than the full amount, you're OK even if you choose to pay it in full sometimes or indeed all the time - but if you use a "charge card" for the purchase, then you won't be covered.

Another questionmark: I don't know if this includes software downloads. Does anyone know?

Surely this is a good thing for e-commerce as well as consumer rights. In a way, it will give credit card issuers a slight competitive advantage over PayPal and the like. Even though it will hit the pockets of the credit card companies first, I've no doubt that eventually it'll hit us consumers too, in the form of even higher overall charges or interest rates; and that will be what it will be, so you may as well get yourself that extra protection when you're buying from abroad, in my view.

Usual blurb - I'm not a consumer lawyer, this is very general and isn't legal advice, blah blah, if you are on the cusp of the price range and aren't sure if you're covered, if you find yourself in a situation involving needing to claim against your credit card issuer, you should consult your own legal advisers.

More info: