Buyer beware on the Internet

I know how you feel. I am cautious and not instinctively trusting by nature, so I was quite late to the buying on-line, Ebay and Paypal thing.

Fortunately, I have only experienced what was possibly a scam on Ebay and that was over buying something second-hand from an individual and by sticking unambiguously to Paypal’s rules, I got my money back very quickly.

The thing about buying certain goods or services on-line is that is the way the first world at least is moving and though we may be instinctively inclined to stand in front of the waves like King Canute saying “No!!!”, those waves are simply going to wash right over us whether we like it or not, as everyone votes with their Paypal or Google Pay or whatever on-line payment service you use. Even the principal banks are getting in on the act.

The high street is dying, at least in this country (UK), it is. The very centre of towns and cities are full of closed up shops, whether they be independent retailers or branches of national or multi-national multiples and I don’t think it is just down to the on-going effects of the 2008 recession, it is becoming a permanent phenomenon.where the shops are either being boarded up or taken over by charity shops or by fly-by-night scam auctioneers who move on never to be seen again or to be traceable. Who is to say you can’t be fleeced face-to-face as well as on-line?

Increasingly, I can’t get the choice of what I want in the shops that do survive anyway, because they are paying increasingly higher and higher business rates, local taxes and charges to councils and service providers and they can’t afford to keep large or diverse stock ranges in case they are left with large volumes of stuff they simply can’t sell. If you look at their year-on-year sales levels or profits the majority of them are taking a pounding and few of them have any real answers as to how they can counter the on-line sellers and absorb their high high-street overheads at the same time. I think that the majority of them are doomed, even the clothes sellers who you would think would be the last to be affected because people want to feel materials and try things on before buying them. But when the same retailers are basically selling the same things as you move from store to store on the high street because they are actually afraid to step out of line and do something different, too afraid to set the agenda instead of following it, then I think there will be only one outcome.

Once upon a time I would have been a fairly regular high-street shopper as a bit of a social outing if nothing else, if just to do some window shopping, but now I can’t be bothered as it is becoming a disappointing experience every time, even sometimes unpleasant, with councils on top of that actually discouraging people from getting to town centres in a convenient fashion while at the same time trying to keep them alive to keep their income streams alive. There’s not much joined-up thinking going on there; not that it matters, ultimately.

For me, the risk associated with buying on-line and using Paypal is outweighed simply by the greater choice it provides and the money to be saved. As an original sceptic I have now even taken to buying small value items directly from China, via Ebay, sometimes because I simply can’t get it any other way, or because there are simply such radical savings to be made. As it is, a lot of enterprising individuals are buying the same stuff in from China themselves, maybe even via Ebay or AlIexpress, adding their costs and profit on top, and selling to their local natives. What is the risk difference between that viz-a-viz chasing some ghost across the country versus chasing some host over the globe over some low-value item?

Whether we like it or not, it is the future and we can’t stop it or ignore it. If you do, at best you are only subsidizing everyone else.

LikeLike