Shopping around in the UK

13 million people hit the shops in the UK yesterday alone.  Wow! 

and Why?
You really don't have to foot-slog to the shops, not when there is such a vast range of websites available where you can get anything delivered right to your door.   

The variety of reputable, reliable online shopping websites in the UK is astounding.  I was trawling around the internet this week looking to buy a Rug for our lounge - whist I haven't managed to find anything suitable yet, the range of websites I went onto is pretty impressive.     Here's my quick list :

Next  (has the best inbuilt seach engine, in my opinion – narrows things down to size – very handy when looking for rugs!)

Littlewoods

Tesco

Asda

Aldiss

Argos

House of Fraser

Wilkinson

BHS

John Lewis

Home Bargains

e-Bay

Ikea

Home

Marks & Spencer

Brandquarter

Isme  (online catalogue shopping for women)

K & Co  (online catalogue shopping)

Amazon UK  (that old stalwart)

I am used to purchasing things online - though South African websites are mostly not reliable and generally not at all cheaper than buying in the actual shop.  When I was back in Edenvale running my little business, I bought most of my Little Vixen stock from China and never had any problems with delivery, cost or quality of products.    

There is a plethora of UK websites that are devoted to comparing prices for the consumer on just about everything from cameras to the cost of your electricity bill.   

One example - 

I am also looking at treating myself eventually and buying a Nikon D3200 DSLR camera with 18-55mm VR lens.  I saw one at Jessops in Norwich (at the Chapelfield Mall) and was almost tempted to go in an bend the credit card - the price at Jessops was£439.00 – discounted to £394.00 if you use the ‘cashback’ deal they have running at the moment in association with Nikon.   The cash back is actually a bit of a con, because you don’t get that cash back at all, you get a card preloaded with the money, which you have to use in store to purchase something else.   Anyway, I thought Jessops price wasn't too bad, after comparing with Curry's and other photographic supply shops in the UK. 

This camera would have cost me R6631.00 in South Africa (at SACamera.co.za) ... 

I started looking around on the comparison websites today:

£369.99 -  on e-bay    (this price off the comparison website idealo.co.uk)

£390.10 – amazon uk (this price off comparison website pricerunner.co.uk)

 

 I found a list of price comparason websites from paler.com ... this is a basic list, they have even more lists for specialist products and services on their website: 

 

Kelkoo.co.uk - features a large number of categories including books, CDs, travel, computing and electronics categories (Kelkoo also run Shopgenie).

Pricerunner UK - covers many categories from books, through electrical appliances to travel insurance.
Shopping.com UK offers a large number of categories, from appliances, through music to jewellery.  Shopping.com also run the sites Dealtime and DoorOne.
Ciao.co.uk comparisons and reviews across a wide range of categories.
Google's Product Search service, with ordering by price (unfortunately no postage info is included) and breakdown by category.
Amazon.co.uk - not often thought of as a comparison site, but features prices from other retailers alongside their own prices.
BuyCentral.co.uk  - offers a categorised and searchable database of products, that can be ordered and filtered by price.
Pricegrabber UK limited to PC goods and consumer electrical equipment.
Nextag UK offers a wide variety of categories.
Shopping.zdnet.co.uk - PC goods, digital cameras and camcorders.
Shopzilla.co.uk - covers a wide range of categories, from clothing to video games and cosmetics.
Zencudo.co.uk - offers a large number of categories.
Foundem.com - large number of categories.
Twenga.co.uk - reviews and comparisons.
Jellydeal.co.uk - provides comparisons over a large number of categories
Smartshopping.co.uk - price comparisons
Find-dvd.co.uk - DVD, CD and videogame comparisons over a number of sites.
123PriceCheck - comparisons of books, DVDs, CDs and videos.
Pricechecker.co.uk - includes music, games, finance and computer categories.
Dmoz.org features a UK list of price comparison sites.

Some more that I found in independent searches:

Gocompare.co.uk   (I found this website on a Google search and my brother also told me about it –  this website is handy for checking comparative quotes on insurance, for example)

Consumerfocus.org.uk – for comparing energy costs per supplier in your area.

Mysupermarket.co.uk  - for checking your grocery list prices before you go out to shop!

 

Hopefully all these sites are going to help me get savvy with regards costs in this country - for now, I'm going to hold back on buying my camera until the Christmas sales are on. 

  

Happy Christmas Shopping everyone!