Is anyone else fed up with online clothes shopping?

[bellamountain]

I must admit it is convenient sometimes, but it takes ages to find something online because there is so much choice. I actually waste hours online shopping just browsing before I commit to buying. Delivery and now returns cost and it's the endless back and forth to the post office or wherever (often with large queues) to return items. I also hate waiting to be refunded because it takes many online retailers far too long to refund.

Most of us do have a local town centre which, in the old days, would have had some decent clothes shops but now they are full of eateries and hairdressers. There are delivery vans driving at speed (dangerously) everywhere. I honestly believe a return to shopping on a local high street would benefit the environment and economy hugely.

Is anyone lucky enough to have a decent town centre close by? I have to drive to an out of town shopping centre which is a good 40 minutes away to have any decent choice.

I do praise Peacocks though and long may they continue because they seem to be the only clothes shop to invest in local town centres.

Same here. I would rather buy in store than online. I like to check the material, size, colour etc before I buy.
There was a time when I bought online as there is more choice etc but must be getting older!
I hate the whole faffing about, browsing online for hours on end, reading reviews etc then not always being super excited with what I have got.
To be honest I am someone who has barely got anything wrong too, maybe a dress a little bit shorter than I would like.
Many people I know have actually received the wrong things, nor checked sizes properly etc so got something tiny when it was meant to be big etc.
I hate returning things so would make do with something I got rather than return so that is not the best thing either.

I agree. Fortunately, we have a small Next and M&S food nearby, so I can do Click and collect. Next returns are good and the money is refunded quickly.

The worst has been Brand Alley, who took three weeks to refund me for a wrongly sent item. I ordered a dress and they sent jeans. They wanted photos of everything too.

Retailers take the money from the account immediately, so they should refund promptly. The nearest town centre has lost most of its clothes shops and there’s Phase 8, New Look and TK Maxx left now. Nine years ago, when we moved here, there was a H of F, plus loads of other stores. Now, it’s coffee shops and eateries and charity shops.

I miss the days when you could pop into town for a browse. Online shopping takes forever and it’s dispiriting when it arrives and isn’t right.

Yes, I only tend to use online if I know exactly what I want (from having had it before) but my first instinct is always to head to the shops. We are fortunate to have a big town shopping centre 20 mins drive away but in my own town its only Peacocks and Sainsburys now. I really enjoy shopping. Don't enjoy waiting for parcels, sending things back, waiting for a refund.

By the time I've driven, parked and rode, fought my way past students and tourists, I'm always disappointed by the shops with only half the size range in any one item etc, the shoes that all look the same etc.

I enjoy shopping on line. I put things in my basket and if I'm still interested a few days later I might actually place the order. Most the time I'm window shopping I guess for things I don't NEED, so much as like the look of. Things we NEED (socks, school clothes etc) come the next day from Amazon.

The sizing gets me, you just can’t rely on the sizes being right. I ordered two tops the same in different colours, from M & S and the sizes weren’t the same.

I always prefer to shop in store and try on but shops don’t have the same range anymore.

online is always hit and miss because you have to hope the top that fits the skinny model will look good on your bumpy bits too

My local town centre is shit.

Have Bluewater nearby but hate it with a passion and still find stores like next don't have much of a range.

Much prefer online shopping.

I make far fewer impulse/unresearched online purchases now because returns/exchange processes have become very faffy. I don't really enjoy browsing in-store anymore because businesses tend to treat all their customers like criminals.

I end up going to big cities when I can as I far prefer shopping in person and the choice locally is so dull.

Yes it's pretty rubbish. Sizing can be all over the place, even if u have stuff from that shop already. I always end up returning more than half of what I've ordered sometimes the whole order!

I live next to largest shopping centre in Scotland. So many shops have closed down though that's it's pretty rubbish now. Zara closed which broke my heart 😭 and French connection. Quite a few of the shops have turned in to outlet stores 🤷🏻‍♀️ obvs the big Debenhams also gone. It's all pretty sad.

I will give u a gd tip though for returns. U can get Royalmail to collect from u for free but u will need a printer. I used to be at post office 2-3 times a week between eBay stuff and returns. Now I'm never there, it's fab!

I've also discovered you can book a collection for return on Evri if that helps

Currently 18 weeks pregnant and most stores don’t stock maternity clothes or if they do the selection if very limited. Aside from not knowing how things fit, I’m finding various material /seams irritating my skin and it is a pain having to repeatedly buy-return-wait for refund etc

I really miss the high street - buying clothes and shoes was so easy and we were spoiled for choice. Now pretty much everything is online, and I hate it. You can’t get a true sense of size, colour and it’s a faff waiting for the stuff to arrive only to find it doesn’t fit or the quality is poor.

I know some stores allow you to arrange collection of return items, but many I find are still charging for returns. I just feel that if we all had more choice locally, rather than relying on delivery vans all over the place or having to drive miles away, life would be a lot easier.

I was looking at dresses {Next I think}. There were 9000 search results. Couldn't be arsed, even the filter function brought up over 500.

Totally agree OP. Our local town centre is quite big but I'd say over half of the shops are now empty or have been filled with food/coffee shops etc. I'm newly pregnant too with a few events to attend later on in the year so that will be annoying to get dresses for.

High street shopping is awful too though - the fabrics are nearly all dreadful, sizing all over the place.

I struggle with it too. I have a Next subscription and it no longer includes free returns. I can get the Evri driver to pick up no problem but I have to pay extra although only a small fee
Everything is such thin quality and substandard.

I'm also sick of retailers who take ages to refund and have started to avoid them.

There are some who are generally very good at processing refunds quickly - for example, i've found that John Lewis, M&S, Mint Velvet and ASICS usually refund within 3 or 4 days of posting, so I look there first and am ordering more from them.

Companies who are going to spend 2 weeks plus sitting on a refund can piss right off.

Yes, but I'm also fed up with "High Street" shopping too! The few High Street stores remaining hardly have any stock, so it's basically a waste of time, petrol and parking money to go, only to be told by the staff to "order it online!"

It takes far less time to order online and then return what you don't want. And you avoid the cost of petrol and parking too!

Oh, I hate shopping in physical shops unless they're quiet and I only want something specific. Browsing John Lewis at 18:00 on a weekday evening is much more pleasant than visiting the local city on a Saturday afternoon. Traipsing from one overstocked hot shop playing over loud crap music to another. Hate it. I only have so much energy to keep trying stuff on and then any returns mean going back to the shop. So many other shops now sort online returns, it's just easier to do it that way for me.

Yes! Buying certain items online, like clothes, unless you know exactly what you want, is a very inefficient process. I can scan many more items in the shop than I can on a website even using filters.

I can’t feel the fabric, see the cut properly and also gravitate towards the items with high number of reviews. Which just means you see lots of people wearing the same dress/ top as you, because it’s more visible on websites when you sort by average review.

I definitely find in store shopping more efficient. However I remember being pregnant looking for maternity clothes and there was nothing in the shops. All online. So in store shopping can be limited due to lack of stock.

A key criteria for me shopping in store is also the temperature. If it’s too hot, I won’t bother

Agreed. The shops are so disappointing, they should be trying to attract people back to the high street to inject some life back into towns and cities but it's just not working right now.

My pet peeves browsing for clothes online.

"27 people are looking at this item right now" I DONT CARE!
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