Paying just to try on...

[Pheasantlysurprised]

I know that's how it is now, as more and more high street stores close (not surprisingly), and how there is more choice and better fabrics online.
However, apart from having a credit card attached to Amazon, there is no way to try before you buy.

How do you feel about this? I cant quite get used to it.. I see many people on this forum talking about ordering something to 'try on', but considering most things that we used to try on in stores prior to internet shopping didnt qualify actual purchasing, does anyone else feel less inclined to do it?
I find myself buying less over all, now. I wont be as quick to 'try' something, knowing that the money will leave my account just to do so.It is often quite arsey to do returns, too.

I think online suppliers need to offer us the choice to try before paying, to be honest.

I'm a 30 minute walk / 15 minute bus ride away from what, a decade or so ago, was a thriving high street. Even before the pandemic, it was on its knees. I can't see it coming back from this. But you know, shallow and vacuous as I am, I don't expect my family to uproot so we can be nearer to decent shops.

In most areas in the UK there are shops within a 30-minute drive

Am I the only person laughing hysterically at this? I’ve lived in places where my postcode is excluded from home delivery, never mind a 30 min drive to the shops.

@Floisme

OP it sounds like you’ve chosen to live quite out of the way. I am not the op but may I just say, what the fuck?

Haha, made me chuckle that one! I would have to get a train to Manchester to access decent stores that aren't fat face or Joules. With 2 changes I would certainly be travelling for that long.

Oddly I cant imagine throwing £500 just to try crap on either, I would prefer to throw that on a holiday, unless it's a very special wool coat...

However, I do recommend Biden's new clothing range: presidential it may be, but fabrics and attention to detail are astounding

I do shop online a lot but find I end up compromising on clothes as too much hassle to return, if I’d tried on in the shop I probably wouldn’t have bought it. Also it gets really expensive buying a couple of sizes, and the return taking ages.

Being tall I have to buy every single thing online apart from underwear and shoes. I don’t think I would if I had a choice!

Since Covid so many of the shops in our city have closed, including my best beloved John Lewis, so the options for shopping in store are few in terms of what I like. And I am lucky enough to live half an hour’s walk from the city centre so no issues with access. I actually buy - and always have - quite a bit from stores we have never had here so I have the sizing bang on, but I do sometimes get suckered into buying more than I need to qualify for free delivery.

I often use Klarna if it’s a company I know take a long time for refunds and I am not 100% confident I am going to like/suit something. If you return you let them know in the app so it pauses the purchase, and I pay it right away when I keep the item.

I miss physical clothes shopping

@AuntieMarys

Try being tall...you have to buy everything online.

Or short!

@AnyFucker

I miss physical clothes shopping

Me too 😞 I felt so good getting something from the shop I don't feel good when I order online

Get a next account

Loads of brands are now sold through next. It's usually next day delivery, you can order as much as you like and send back anything you don't want for free via a collect plus shop or they will send a courier to pick it up from you on a specified day.

Just pay for what you have kept at the end of the month.

was also about to recommend Next too - they have lots of brands and can order a few to try and return

It's good that there are more paying options but what some of us are also talking about is the experience and the shortcomings of online shopping, and about how no, it isn't a free choice any more. Judging by a couple of comments, it sounds as if some posters have little idea what a state some of our town and even city high streets are in now.

Ten years ago I was a huge fan of internet shopping because it offered a way of accessing those additional stores that were never going to open round here. I was able to buy Toast for the first time and look at the Brora sales and so on. It feels like a very long time ago My most recent online order was with Marks and Spencer for 4 plain, long sleeved layering tops - I only want one but I can't trust the colours or M&S sizing any more. My local branch (which I suspect isn't much longer for this world) no longer stocks even these basics. i do not consider this to be progress.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree with the op that it can be a pain and there is very little choice in the shops which makes shopping in person really difficult and unsatisfying. However, I find that there is so much more choice online (even if the high street was thriving there would never be as much choice in the shops as online) so it makes shopping online more attractive. I like the fact that I can buy on asos from mango, topshop, asos, whistles, new look, other stories etc. I’d have to travel a long way
To get to a city with those shops, even if the high street was doing well

I much prefer trying things at home because I can take my time and try the item with different shoes etc that I already have.

It must be a pain for anyone without a decent buffer in the bank/on the credit card (not suggesting this is you, OP). Does using Klarna get round that problem?

I quite like doing returns as it makes me feel organised

@floisme yeah, I thought that until Covid. I used to love a day round the shops trying stuff on, testing make-up/skincare/fragrance, having a coffee or drinks or lunch and then picking up a few things for dinner from say Markies on the way home, or meeting up with friends for a drink. Or even just a quick trip to have a look on my way home from work.

For the last few years prior to Covid I’ve only found it possible to do that when on holiday in city. I really mourned the High Street.

It’s demise is down not just to the rise of online shopping but due to austerity, stagnant wages, rising housing costs etc. People just don’t have the disposable income they did. The failing high streets are a visible barometer of the rise of grinding, helpless poverty.

Since Covid my attraction to shops has really fallen though. I now live in the centre of Edinburgh and whilst relatively speaking a lot of great shops are literally on my door step, I’ve found the atmosphere a bit of a barrier. I don’t like playing repeated rounds of “tell me you’re a bam without telling me you’re a bam”.

I take your point Nadia but I also think there have been many recessions and times of hardship in the past. I've never lived through a pandemic before but my grandparents did. In the scheme of things these are not new events, and yet I can't think of anything that's impacted the high street in the way that the internet has done.

Of course much of it has been for the good, especially recently - without online working I'd have been out of a job and I'm truly grateful. But I think the loss of a physical marketplace will have repercussions. And I don't just mean my grumbles about M&S stocking practices, I'm thinking about loss of human interaction, of physical exercise even. I don't think we fully understand yet how it's affecting us.

I find it ironic when many shops are going more online... Amazon has opened a shop at Bluewater shopping centre.

I've been in... it was busy!

Trust Jeff Bezos to not miss a trick

floisme nadia I really miss a "day out" at the shops, which for me would be exactly as described - a good mooch about punctuated with coffee/lunch. We now have no department stores in our city - unless you count M&S which I don't - and I feel so sad about it. I used to be on first name terms with the beauty counter consultants in John Lewis. That building is now a vaccination centre and it is so weird seeing people queuing to get jabbed rather than coming out with bags of shiny new things.

Here in Scotland we're still in masks indoors and I feel like that has changed the shopping experience for me a lot too. I am more inclined to get in and get out, based on needing a specific thing, rather than have a wander round, and I don't enjoy it. I realise that's nothing to do with the OP though.

@AuntieMarys

Try being tall...you have to buy everything online.

Or plus size. Even high street brands that do your size will often only offer them online.

@Judystilldreamsofhorses are you in Aberdeen? I grew up there. My granma lived a stone’s throw from Johnny LouLous and I can’t imagine the building empty. First it was Norco House (with Arnitts/Isaac Benzies across the road) and then John Lewis.

@floisme well Spanish flu did cause a huge amount of suburban building, especially coupled with the growth of motorised transport whether acts or teams. Those rings of 20/30s bungalows that surround the centres of so many cities led to a different type of living and shopping too. Just as in the US “white flight” to the suburbs in the 50s and 60s led to things like drive thrus, the rise of fast food and supermarkets.

So in a way, when how we meet changes, say the highway (roads and fast transport) the information superhighway (broadband and fast digital connections), how we shop changes. And the prevailing socio-economic conditions will combine with that.

I do wonder if at some point in the future, rising fuel/transport costs will put a dampener in home delivery and there will be a drift back to high street stores. But with youngsters being desperately cash strapped and increasingly environmentally aware, I wonder, perhaps hope if consumerism as entertainment will fade, even though I have found so much enjoyment there at times myself.

Yeah shops have always had to change to survive - I can remember when they closed for lunch but a physical marketplace has been a focal part of society for centuries. I remember visiting a preserved ancient Roman town - can't remember the name now but just outside Rome itself - and being struck at how many of the buildings had been shops.

I think messing with that is a big deal and that we don't fully understand the consequences.

Forgive my pessimism but I see little sign of young people becoming less consumerist, I just think they've found new ways to spend their money and exclude their parents.

But to end on a more positive note, although our high street feels a bit apocalyptic, some local neighbourhood shopping streets are as busy as ever - a couple of new coffee shops just up the road now which cheers me right up.

True. But markets became streets of shops and streets of shops became department stores. There may well be virtual reality markets where people meet in the near future. You just fire up your avatar rather than get on a bus.

In the UK, given the pressure on housing, I could see there being benefits to less retail and office space. Some of it can convert to housing, particularly in city centres. Maybe go back to the old style where shops were only on the ground floor, rather than multi-storey.

I am nadia! That poor building being used for Covid jabs now. :-(

This is what Klarna is for - you can buy it now using Klarna but not pay anything upfront, and then either pay or return your items within 30 days.

Personally I love online shopping though and can't remember the last time I tried anything on in store. Maybe it depends on what you buy and wear though - I generally shop with the same brands on a regular basis and I know how their clothes fit me, or I get the same item in various prints/colours etc. I don't really buy anything particularly tailored though so it's easy anyway as there's some flexibility with fits - something like a jersey dress in my usual size will fit 95% of the time.

I'm more concerned about the impact of all the returned clothes, especially as some brands will just destroy them instead of selling them on, and some customers don't treat the items like they would do in store. I'm in some clothing groups on Facebook and it always surprises me what people consider ok - wearing it for half a day etc. and then returning.