Eglu Cube Coop For Sale

[AJuff]

I do try to buy locally but I'm finding it hard to justify the additional cost. I saved £1.5K on a piano last year by buying it from Northern Ireland. I did speak to the local shop to see if they could match it but they wouldn't/couldn't.

 

Yesterday my DD found a beautiful oak bed in a local shop for £625. I have just found the very same bed on the internet for £399!! I cannot justify the additional cost here again.

 

I do feel we should have local shops and I do try to buy most things locally but it seems the internet is to tempting. I know I am contributing to the demise of the local shops but the price differences seem too great.

[Janty]

Again, we try to buy locally but sometimes the extra costs can be prohibitive as you've highlighted. Don't beat yourself up over it. We do what we can but we all live in the real world after all.

[craftyhunnypie]

I know what you mean. At the end of the day you're not going to pay over the odds for the same thing. I love it when I go to another town or city & they still have little independent shops that sell ' different' things from the norm. Hubby loves the old hardware shops & we both love the butchers & bakeries. But it's the haberdashery, wool & gift shops I love.

The internet just beats the price all the time though. The only thing that I find difficult to buy online are shoes - they need seeing in the flesh & trying on for comfort.

 

Emma.x

[Olly]

I try to buy food locally because of the 'food miles', but I think with things like furniture, electrical goods etc you can't afford not to shop around. There just isn't that much choice locally - and I could spend a lot more in petrol going round a few of the local towns,than would be spent in delivering something that I've seen online. I always look online first to get a guide price before I buy anything these days.

[patsylabrador]

It's sad but true. My passion is for buying books and I love bookshops. Inevitably though, when I find a book I like the look of I go home and buy it online because I can't justify just handing over the full amount in a shop when it's cheaper even with postage to buy it online.

I like to buy electrical goods from John Lewis stores though because I like the service they offer and I like to get the feel of an oven etc before I buy it. But that's not a local shop either, just another big store. We tried once to buy a washing machine from the local shop but the service and delivery was awful and we've never been back since.

[Happy chickens!]

We have a great local diy shop - their prices may not always be quite as low as the big guys, but they save me a lot of time and petrol, so well worth it. Bigger purchases I almost always buy online, but we don't have many independent shops for those sort of things anyway. The one I do feel guilty about is books - we have a wonderful bookshop in the next town, but I now buy e-books. I do think the internet must be changing the way we shop, but I agree with you about shoes Emma - and will always go to the local hairdresser too!!

[WarrensWorld]

If you think GB is a rip off country you should try living in southern Ireland. Everything here is at least 15% more expensive than it is in the north. That's why lots of people down here head north and buy in bulk, the retail outlets near the border are always moaning about the loss of trade.

I love the internet I buy all my books that way even adding the P&P it still works out much cheaper. Services to are much cheaper too ie, I needed an unleaded cylinder head for my old Cortina, the cost of having it done over here €200.00 -(£166.20) that's on an exchange basis. I bought a new big valve racing head (all bells and whistles) from the UK outright cost €197.50 - (£164.00)carriage paid. I bought a guitar from the USA cost €700.00 including P&P and duty paid. The same guitar from a local music shop €1200.00. If you think I'm going to pay €500.00 more to support my local music shop well you must be as mad as a box of frogs, even buying mail order from Dublin it would still cost €350.00 more

We buy most of our clothes from the UK and America, and most of our small electrical goods from Germany. Fortunately we have an Aldi and a Lidl in town, but even they are more expensive than the north. If it wasn't for the Internet I don't think we could live as well as we do well here. In these austere times one has to mind the pennies.

[ubereglu]

We try to support local shops, but there aren't many left down here now-very few independents left in Yeovil-mostly chains and the high street has lost all character it once had. I personally can't go shopping online as I don't have a debit card, but if I find something I want I get my sister to pay for it and then pay her back.

 

I tend to use the internet to price check, and if I high street shop is cheaper than another I will look at their pricing in store and buy from there.

[Cinnamon]

All very true - I never buy anything without doing a price check on the internet first,or looking on eBay.

 

Its still best to 'buy local' when it comes to tradesmen though.

Our nationwide competitor is literally 6 times the price for an inferior product,but people use them because they are a name

[majorbloodnock]

I have to admit I believe any business should gain my custom purely because it has earned it, and any local business trying to make a case for "deserving" my money to keep local businesses alive is just not being managed professionally.

 

HOWEVER (and it's a big "however"), I do not buy purely based on price. I look at my value for money, and that means taking into account anything the business has done to improve things for me. For instance, my local farm shop charges a little bit more for its items, but I don't have to queue for ages at a busy till, I don't have to wade through lots of marketing, they'll stock something if I ask them to and the products are usually locally sourced (thereby reducing food miles as someone else has already mentioned). Since I'd be happy to pay the premium just for the time saving per visit, I'm easily quids in, so the local business gets my custom. Similar arguments can be applied to one of my local bike shops - the one that gained my custom after I gave up on the constant sob stories and "life as a small business is terrible 'ard" attitude of one of the other local bike shops.

 

So, at the risk of being controversial, I don't believe we should support small businesses or local businesses. I believe we should support businesses that give us what we want. For me, that happens to generally exclude all the major supermarkets as well as any shop that wants to try to tweak my conscience strings.

[chickenanne]

Businesses with a real shop-front (rather than a virtual one) have higher running costs, so realistically they are almost always going to be a bit more expensive. I'm happy to pay a bit extra if it means I can see the product "in the flesh" as it were - even if I could see it then buy the same thing online - as it would feel a bit bad otherwise. HOWEVER, I would be prepared to pay a BIT more, not screamingly over-the-odds more.

 

As to supporting local businesses generally: it depends on how you would feel if you lost them. If it's a business that you could and would happily live without, (either for yourself or the community), then so be it. If it's a service or shop that you find very handy, and you want to see it continue, then you have to try to use it fairly regularly for that to happen. I used to use our local mechanics all the time, but they were just so rubbish (every time the car went in it came out with new faults!) - eventually I stopped and took the car elsewhere - it would be insane to do otherwise, and if the garage goes out of business as a result of people behaving that way, then so be it; it's a business, not a charity.

[docsquid]

I consider both price and service - local shops can sometimes offer advice, and are also convenient if there are any issues after purchasing. When we bought our new car under the s"Ooops, word censored!"page scheme, DH went to the local dealer and got a price. He then searched around on the internet and found a much better deal, but it was in Cardiff. He then went back to another local dealer and asked if they could match the price - they couldn't, but they came close. The advantages in terms of getting servicing done locally including a deliver and drop off service, meant that we bought from them, rather than the distant dealership.

 

We are lucky, though, in that many of our local suppliers seem to be pretty good value anyway - if the difference in price is small, we will go local.