Price Comparison websites are websites that compare products to find the lowest price for the consumer. They have received positive press coverage. The giants eBay and Yahoo own some price comparison websites!. I will in this article explain why they do not always work. Nothing is more potent than language, and I hope the words in this article will save you money.
Price comparison websites list bathroom goods (among others) in a list format that allows the consumer to compare several prices on one web page for the same item. The prices all come from different retailers operating under free market conditions selling that same item. As many consumers now pay thousands of pounds for new bathroom goods, price comparisons should have a key role. However, increasingly clever retailers are finding ways to avoid price comparisons. I will explain how they are doing that in this article.
Retailers avoid price comparisons by product re-branding, hiding VAT, surreptitiously adding delivery charges, and disingenuously selling copies of branded products. This avoidance is done to increase prices to the consumer. I will illustrate product re-branding in the free market; re-branding is by far the commonest and most egregious means by which consumers are overcharged and price comparison websites rendered impotent.
I have no connection with the following parties at all, and their names are shown just to show a point about how the intent of price comparison methods is circumnavigated by clever retailers.
The national group called Wolseley owns Bathstore.com; it has over a hundred and fifty real stores nationwide and a large website. Bathstore sells Crosswater goods (an imported line) but Bathstore renames the Crosswater goods to avoid price comparisons.
This is one example of how they do it. Hey Joe is one product name within the Crosswater colllection and sold to retailers nationwide including Bathstore. If I look at Boundary Bathrooms, a small retailer I picked at random (it has one store versus the 150 from Bathstore), I see the product sold for 156 pounds.
The same product is sold at Bathstore for 219 pounds under the new name Idea. The Bathstore customer is paying much more for the same product due to re-branding (it is not sold as Crosswater). The Bathstore customer has been misled to paying over 40% more for the same item, with price comparison methods being ineffective.
This one simple example is one of thousands and just printed here for proof of the practice. I could have picked almost any retailers at random to show this point, and my choice was entirely random, and driven by the fact that Bathstore is a large British national company.
Re-branding is so easy in bathroom retail because many bathroom goods are made in China. The actual original manufacturer name does not show anywhere anyway. Often the manufacturer will supply several importers and each of them is able to re-brand the product. The product can then be re-branded again by the retailer to avoid price comparisons.
If that were not enough to confuse the honest consumer just looking for the best price, the retailer has plenty more swindles in his bag of swindles to get the retail prices increased without the consumer knowing that he will be swindled.
Another way retailers avoid price comparisons is to exclude VAT in advertisements. The VAT is then added at the end of the transaction. Price comparison sites require VAT to be shown in the prices, but sometimes that condition is breached. I know of one case in which a retailer hid VAT in major price comparison websites. Since VAT is 17.5%, this is an important amount of money to hide for the retailer.
Hiding delivery charges are another means by which retailers can avoid price comparisons. Some retailers excessively charge delivery, and then lower the retail cost of the goods. Therefore, the total amount payable is inflated despite a lower retail cost. Advertisements appear attractive until you see the final charge. Delivery charges can be 100 pounds or more for one shipment.
Retailers also can include illegal re-stocking charges to avoid genuine like for like comparisons. These charges can be 25% and they negate the customers legal right to get a full refund within a cooling off period. Such charges are illegal under Distance Selling Regulations. So a price may appear cheaper until the full contract of sale is examined to show hidden charges in the form of re-stocking charges.
A variation on importer and retailer re-branding is used the large copying market. In China, many companies will copy an existing design. This has infamously happened on Clearwater baths. The market is awash with copies. Sometimes the original name Clearwater will be used when the bath is not Clearwater at all. Clearwater is one of the strongest brand names in the European Union for freestanding acrylic baths; it exports from the UK to 24 countries including the USA. Its name attracted the attention of the copiers in China. Clearwater responded by adding an official certificate for genuine Clearwater baths.
To find the best prices, you have to be product wise and like everything else read the written words in articles like this, and make your judgements. Fundamentally, you should introspectively just ask one question: Is the product cost really worth that much money to me? Be careful of clever advertisements, read the contracts, and ask when unsure. One question asked can save you a lot of heart and headache.
This article is written by Trevor Oakley. He is the managing director of Merrows Bathrooms. Merrows has traded for four years selling hundreds of thousands of pounds of quality goods. He also manages the Sayworth website. That site is about consumer advice and it has buying tips.
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