Do you complain enough??

Not sure about the USA., but here in Britain we are not that good at complaining!  Perhaps we should do more of it!

Last week we were shopping in Sainsbury's and saw a small reduced to clear section. I selected two items which normally cost £2.48 and where marked up as reduced to clear £1 per item, a saving of £2.96, not a fortune, but worth having, as the items where ones I use anyway, and you know me, the discerning shopper!

In the melee of packing and paying I did not see the items go through the scanner, and it wasn't until we got home that I checked the till receipt, only to discover that instead of getting the two items for £1 each, I had been charged £2.48 for each one.  Balls, I thought, I will have to drive back to the store for a refund, and by the time we have paid for the extra fuel for the car, it was hardly worth it, not to mention the extra time it would take. Next thing I know, Linda is on the phone to Sainsbury's Customer care line, and she has got a grovelling apology, and a full £20 in nectar points!! Way to go! A very generous gesture was my first thought, but let's face it, if I had been a trading standards officer, then Sainsbury's would have been prosecuted and fined several thousands of pounds! By advertising on the shelf one price and then charging me at the checkout another price, Sainsburys had broken the law, and it was a very serious breach.

Now online it is important for you, the customer, to be able to buy with confidence, and fear of getting ripped off or scammed is still the number one reason people are reluctant to shop online. But in many ways, if you follow a few simple rules, shopping online is often safer than more traditional shopping. I recommend that you use a double safety layer method whenever you can.

Firstly, if you have a credit card, use it to shop online. I don't mean go mad and run up a huge bill, if you can, clear your credit card bill every month. The fact is, that for most credit cards, you are covered if things go wrong. A merchant might be willing to take a chance and rip you off, but no merchant wants to take on Visa, and be blacklisted. The second layer I use is Payapl. I know from my Ebay seller experience, that Paypal always takes the side of the buyer, and not the seller, in any dispute. That might seem strange, as it is the sellers and not the buyers that pay the Paypal fees and charges (a major reason why I no longer sell on Ebay). Using Paypal has the added advantage of shielding your card details from the merchant, so you can use the credit card without giving out your card details. And a Paypal dispute nearly always ends in the buyer getting their money back.

So my message is simple, look for merchants who accept Paypal, and use it with a card if you can. Of course you should look carefully at a site before you buy, and do complain should things go wrong!
Happy Shopping

Rob