Dear LPG, 

When you retire many things change.  For one thing you start to get more mail and I remember some of it being quite annoying at first.   I know that so many of us older people get really frustrated when all those mini catalogues arrive on the mat day after day.  It is something that gets worse when you send for that first thing from one of them that attracts your attention, but while I have spent a lot of time moaning about how many of them there are, they do make a cup of mid-morning tea a bit more pleasant as you flick the pages over. 

If nothing else the last two years have forced many people who would have left their distance shopping at ordering the odd item from one of those little catalogues, to learn how to also shop online.  Getting your food delivered is something that made sense and, I count myself lucky because during the lockdown periods of the pandemic when we were all advised to stay at home, my children did a lot of the ordering for me, and my food would just arrive.  I am so glad however to be able to get out again and make my own fruit and vegetable selections.  

Then came the highlight of that first pandemic year (or ‘lowlight’ depending on how it was for you), our first stay-at-home alone in Christmas 2020.  I am sure that I am not the only pensioner who learnt a lot that year about buying presents online.  I got very good at ordering them and arranging for them to be delivered to my grandchildren even though I could not be there.  

This gave me a bit of confidence and I have been at it ever since.  
I now find myself looking through the online shops just like the youngsters do.   I suspect that many other older people who would never have got involved without pandemic-provocation, now have found the impetus to join the online-shopping brigade.    The problems come when the things you bought need to be returned because something is not right.  

I suspect that the retailers assume that many of their customers won’t bother to return things, especially if they did not cost a lot in the first place but, even worse, is when something is missing or broken.

When it comes to the technical stuff I have learnt that there is always a video on YouTube that will help.  I have always noticed the ‘unboxing’ videos as opposed to the ones that show you how to get the products working for the first time.   

But I have learnt something and that is the importance of making unboxing videos of your own.  When there are disputes about what arrived and what didn’t, an unboxing video of your own can sometimes make all the difference.  

When you order four little gismos and only three arrive, or there is a crack that it could be argued happened as it came out of the box, if you have a short video showing that, it is even harder for the seller to dispute that you helped it to happen.  If you have a tablet, mobile phone, camera or webcam, that will do the trick, your own personal unboxing video is well worth making just in case.  

I think that everyone who has a mobile phone needs to learn how to turn it on, prop it up so that it can see you open the parcel and don’t forget to take a picture of the delivery label just in case there is a surprise or disappointment inside.  If all is well you can delete the footage and usually the video is proof of the date you did the unboxing too.  It can come in handy if there is a guarantee dispute a year or two later… 

OG, Greenwich

LPG offered some advice on this consumer based subject way back in 2017 and we are pleased that OG has managed to update that information for our more up to date online-shopping high street consumer… 

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