The above illustration is a representation of how you can save yourself ££££’s by 

buying direct from businesses through their websites or high street stores as opposed 

to buying through a third party auction site.  

 

Both e-commerce stores and online auction sites have their own advantages, but if 

you are looking for a great product, great value and a great service, you may need to 

look at little further than the go to auction sites. 

 

Firstly, when you buy direct from the high street or web store you can and should 

expect a higher level of service and after sales service.  Secondly, you should expect 

to pay a fairer price.  How? Well let’s take online as an example.  If you purchase 

through an auction site the seller will be pushed by that site to offer things like “fast 

and free” if they don’t their item will rank lower in the search results or won’t get 

seen at all. Fast and free that’s good for a buyer right? – Wrong - the seller will have 

taken into account the amount it will cost them to package and ship that item - it is 

just a hidden cost to you.  Also the seller has to take into account the fees. These 

include, monthly shop fees, listing fees, advertising fees (that’s all before they have 

sold the product). Once they have sold that particular item, there’s a percentage 

deducted for the sale and a charge for handling the transaction.  These fees also 

include a fee on the postage amount, but hey it was fast and free postage so how can 

they charge them a fee on the postage?  A savvy seller may even have added on those 

fees! 

 

You may find you have paid a fair price for that item, but have you got value for 

money? Let’s say you want to buy two of these products, in reality you are paying for 

twice the postage.  No were not saying that when you purchase direct from a website 

or high street store, that store doesn’t have the fees as they will still incur fees and 

charges for their website, their rent, rates, staffing costs, postage costs etc, but and 

this is a BIG BUT- you may find the majority of times you can get the products at a 

better price (better value). 

 

For example here at boxz we do not add postage costs onto the item price.  When you 

shop with us we want you to get good value and if you buy more than one of 

something you don’t want to be paying over the odds for the postage. We do charge 

postage - a flat rate of £2.99 so you can buy as many items as you like safe in the 

knowledge that you are not being over charged for postage and if you spend over 

£35.00 we won’t charge you at all.  Why not?   Well, we call this value.  Value for 

you and we value you - it’s awesome that you chose to buy from us and we appreciate 

you and for that we give you good value, a good price and great customer service.  

 

Of course not all sites are set up like that and not all site are born equal - at times you 

will find products that are being sold at a ridiculously low price elsewhere and well 

that may be too good a deal to pass up on, but there may be a number of different 

reasons for that; check that the product is what is says it is. Most of the time it is, so 

why it is so cheap? They have to compete to get seen and to sell and the only way to 

do that is with the price, and at times – in fact a lot of the time it is at the cost of the 

seller -  they end up losing money!  That is never a good deal for anyone. As a buyer 

you want to think that you can go back to that seller and buy again or get some 

product support, but if they are losing money that can’t go on for long and nor will 

they.  That’s not good value! 

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