Why don’t you …

… try shopping around on the internet
(or … lose c4 hours of your day)?

#9

Spoiler alert: while the results are mildly surprising (sort of), this post does not stand a chance of ever being an exciting read. It did save me money though, albeit at the expense of my sanity for that afternoon.

I have implemented a system of writing shopping lists of things I need (arguably “want”) so I can hit the (online) shops in one go when I deem my list long enough. The idea of the list, and it’s not been a complete success, is to avoid “tangent” purchases.

I see every minute online shopping as time wasted, particularly as I am far too easily distracted and lured in unexpected directions, which only leads to my amazement and horror at the ease with which I just spent double/triple money and time. Admittedly, this can also apply to real life shopping, but that is generally a more enjoyable experience in my view, especially as there are coffee/cake/snack/lunch/sociable/outdoors/step-count distractions.

Has anyone noticed they buy a lot of cables?

Anyway, my list. Once it reached the end of the back of the recycled Christmas card I had written it on, 12 items (which became 13 after a slight multi-click tangent-triggered reminder) needed to be purchased.

The plan was to put them in one Amazon basket, one eBay basket and one with items bought from individual shops. I did not expect to be on my laptop long enough for the battery to almost run out (at <10% battery life I made the final purchase, some hours after I started this “experiment”).

Here is my list, Amazon price, eBay price. In bold is the purchase I made:


kettle plug (£4.99, £4.99)

a stencil of marigold flowers (niche, I know) (£11.99, nothing suitable)

purple shampoo (to neutralise the yellow zones from my recent foray into home-bleaching) (£3, £6.50 – exact same product)

Uni Jetstream 0.7mm blue pen refill (SXR-80-07) (one refill for my beloved blue/black/red/green/pencil pen) (£7.49 for one of each colour and two black refills, £8.90 for ten blue refills)

rubber page turners (I’ve been dealing with a lot of paperwork recently and licking a finger to turn pages seems even more gross than it previously did) (£1.99 for five the same, £2.85 for five, one of each size)

knickers suitable to wear under a white skirt (I shouldn’t really wear white clothes but I went through a billowy white skirt-purchase phase without thinking of the pant situation) (£11 for two possibly ok pairs, nothing I liked)

ice cube tray (dishwasher pretty much melted the last one we had, which was both cheap and a little too novelty) (£8.99, £5.69 – nice ones with a lid)

Spontex bamboo-lined gloves to replace a pair that finally leaked (my relationship with rubber gloves has deteriorated since my hands have become dry and the weather has become hot. I need a non-rubbery lining to not completely prune my hands) (not available but a plan B pair £2.99, same plan B pair £4.18)

hair clippers (ours are blunt, which may be part of the reason Chris did such a bad job of “styling” my hair previously) (£45.99, same clippers £76.98)

Matador gloves (my friend has them, they’re for professionals, eg hair stylists in the new gloved-world, who need really good, fitted gloves in your exact size) (£3.10, £3.49)

a face mask that doesn’t ping off my ears at the slightest movement, make me itch, make me sweat, make my glasses steam up or make me look ridiculous (a stretch, this one) (£10.39 for two, £13.98 for two of similar style)

my cat’s Joint Genie (a natural pet remedy for creaky joints which seems to work and which I hope never to run out of for fear she’ll start creaking and cracking again – and, yes, I have considered dropping some in my food to see if it helps me; she seems to think it tastes nice) (£17.97, £22.80)

the unofficial number 13 was a webcam but I’d given up price-checking by then and just bought it for around £53 from Amazon.


I actually thought prices would be similar, and indeed item 1, the kettle plug, was £4.99, postage included, on Amazon and eBay. So I bought on eBay. I hate, hate, hate Amazon.

As for the plan to shop around, I tried that first with the underwear. I looked on M&S and was all set to make an order for three pairs at £12 but it would have been £3 to deliver or, fairly easy for me considering I live in walking distance of an M&S, free to collect. I realise that Covid-19 restrictions on shopping are in place for good reason but I abandoned the underwear when I had to book a day to collect them (possibly also a time, but I didn’t get as far as to find that out – I didn’t know what day I would want to/be able to collect them and the day of my big shop had no availability for collection).

I also looked for the stencil, Spontex gloves and cotton face masks on other sites but I think I had very much lost the will by then and options weren’t to my exacting requirements within the first few searches.

To my extreme annoyance (I’m not going to go off on one about Amazon and their business model), I bought most items from Amazon. With a few postage payments, prior to the addition of the webcam, Amazon totalled £129.85 and eBay £146.58 but eBay did not include a stencil or the underwear, which would have reduced the Amazon total to £106.86 had I matched the items in the baskets to the same ten in each.

I suppose the moral of this tale of a frustrating and time-sapping afternoon is that it does pay to shop around, that Amazon generally has the cheaper hand and that buying knickers online, assuming you don’t know the exact brand/cut, is a minefield of considerations (which gets worse if you actually read any reviews – wouldn’t get that distraction on an actual shopping trip). My preferred method of shopping, without doubt, is still a shopping trip to physical shops, even if it costs more in postage (my travel expenses!), time and actual price. But by doing this experiment, I did at least save money and, writing this a week later, I am in possession of all orders.