Our View – Buying Goods Online

DURING lockdown, few of us were able to go shopping in person and ended up buying large amounts of product online.

This activity made many large businesses upgrade their websites to offer a wider and faster range of services and many of us still buy a great deal of material online.

There has certainly been some return to personal shopping although it is telling that Amazon have recently closed two of their self-service, cashless physical supermarkets as it would appear that they were not proving popular.

It can be difficult to buy online from the UK because of Brexit and unless the store you are purchasing from has registered for European VAT and is shipping goods below a certain value, there is often a delay and the possibility of the purchaser having to pay customs duties.

Online stores situated within the European Union can supply goods to any other EU State which means that local online sellers should in theory become more competitive.

One of Spain’s largest fashion giants has until recently used Correos for delivery and the Spanish Post Office has generally been very efficient but now they have changed and are using other couriers who presumably offer a cheaper service.

We have readers who complain that despite paying for home delivery, couriers simply state that they have tried to deliver and couldn’t so have left the goods at a central point for collection which may be several kilometres away.

If the purchaser doesn’t collect the goods, then they are returned to the seller and refund can take anything up to a month which is no good for anyone.