Research sites before buying

There are many savings to be made online, particularly when buying electronic goods, but don't presume that all websites and their after-sales service are the same, writes CONOR POPE

NOVEMBER IS barely a wet week old yet many retailers have already festooned their shops with Christmas trees and Santas, and are piping the music of Slade and Wizzard throughout their stores for the joy and delight of their customers.

While Price Watch – along with most reasonably minded people – frowns upon shops that extend the festive shopping season to such an extent that the Christmas stock is forced to compete with Halloween outfits for the attention of shoppers, when it comes to shopping online for presents there’s no time like the present.

Much of the talk on the radio and television and comment in the newspapers in the coming weeks will centre around the tens of thousands of people who are set to cross the Border in search of better value, but the savviest shoppers will be bargain hunting from the comfort of their own couches.

For Irish people, the online electronics marketplace has changed significantly since last Christmas, largely because the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon, is now willing to take orders through its UK arm for electronic goods from shoppers in the Republic – something it refused to do in Christmases past. In recent months it has also introduced free shipping to Irish shoppers who spend over £25 (€28), making it an even more attractive destination in these cash-strapped times.

Even without these changes, the potential savings to be made online are enough to give traditional retailers nightmares. Using only four very well known sites – Amazon, eBay, Komplett and Pixmania – we saved ourselves nearly €1,000 when we shopped last week for a basket of just six items.

A TomTom satellite navigation system with maps covering the UK and the Republic of Ireland costs €400 in retailers in the Republic but sells for €244 on the web; a 120-gigabyte iPod Classic, priced €229 on Irish high streets, is €211 online; a Sony digital video camera costs €425.99 in Ireland but just €276 on the web; a Vaio laptop from the same maker costs €1,249 offline but €777 online; a Roberts internet radio is priced €299 in regular shops but €174 on the web; and an Olympus digital voice recorder, sourced for €45 on the web, was selling for €110 in Dublin shops last week. All told, our six items cost €1,727 online compared with €2,713 in Irish shops.

The principal reason online retailers can so heavily undercut traditional retailers is because of their substantially reduced overheads and the low prices have helped the online electronic goods market across the EU grow to more than €7bn annually in little more than a decade. For Irish shoppers shopping in sterling, the marketplace is even more attractive this year. There are, however, pitfalls to buying big ticket electronic items online.

Earlier this month, a reader got in touch after enduring over a year of grief with a home cinema system he’d bought through the Pixmania website. From the start, the sound wasn’t right, but because the process involved in returning it seemed like too much hassle, he made do, until, shortly before the 12-month warranty expired, the sound system gave up the ghost entirely.

He could have sent it back to the online retailer and they would have been obliged to offer him a repair, refund or replacement under consumer legislation, and Pixmania would also have been liable for the delivery costs because the product was faulty. However, the idea of packing it up securely and arranging for it to be shipped via courier to France seemed troublesome so he chose an alternate route.

Our reader contacted the manufacturer directly and, because it has a base in Ireland, the company sent a courier to collect the system. Within a couple of weeks, its repair team had determined there was a serious fault with the home cinema kit and they agreed to replace the home cinema system but, for some inexplicable reason, this crucial fact was not relayed to our reader.

He called the company repeatedly and sent e-mails but he could not get through to anyone who could tell him what was going on. It would, he says, have been a whole lot easier had he bought the TV in a regular, bricks-and-mortar store as the physical presence in a shop of a customer with steam coming out of their ears is a lot harder to ignore than e-mails and telephone calls, and he feels that the online savings were cancelled out by the fact that he was without his prized product for the guts of a year.

It is not an unusual story. A third of all complaints about the online retailing sector across the EU now centre around the electronics market and, according to an investigation carried out on behalf of the European Commission, details of which were published last month, over half of all websites which sell electronic goods within the EU are routinely breaking consumer law.

The reported breaches included a widespread failure to comply with rules on clear and unambiguous pricing, failure to include physical addresses on websites and, crucially, the omission of details regarding returns.

When you buy online, you have the right to return the goods within seven days without giving any reason and the online shop is obliged to issue you with a full cash refund and cannot try to fob you off with credit notes or vouchers – a right that does not extend to customers of traditional retailers. This right does not, however, extend to products bought via auction sites such as eBay.

If the product purchased is faulty, you are entitled to a repair, a replacement or a refund and the website must, retrospectively, cover the costs of returning the product. They also have to provide clear, unambiguous details of how it accepts returns. This fairly simple message does not seem to have got through to the majority of online retailers who sell electronic goods, however.

The commission-backed survey of 370 companies by enforcement agencies across the EU – including the National Consumer Agency – found that 55 per cent showed irregularities. Some six potential problem sites were identified by the NCA but it declined to say who they were on grounds that its investigations were ongoing.

The advice for ensuring you’re not stung when searching for online bargains this year can be boiled down to a single word: research. Many online retailers have excellent processes for handling faulty goods and for providing clear and useful instructions on returns, others are not so good.

It is almost certain that the ones which have a bad reputation will be regularly slated on discussion boards, such as boards.ie, so if you are unsure about the bona fides of a particular site, google it first. Make sure that the sites you’re spending a lot of money on have a website’s physical address – if you can’t find it, think twice and look for an e-mail address or phone number in case you have a question or problem or need help should things go wrong. And always remember that while there are lots of bargains out there, if the price seems too good to be true, then it probably is.