Stephanie Dearden
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson for Tooting
Tel: 020-7771-2551 or 07985649807
Letters to the Editor
Tuesday 6th December 2005
SIR-
Record levels of debt could be made worse with the drive to online shopping during the Christmas spending spree. The trend to shop on the internet will hit local shops and tempt more people into debt. Christmas brings its own financial pressures and I fear that we could see the situation getting worse as people shop online and this will have a knock-on effect on some of our local shops who rely on the Christmas trade to get them through quiet patches on the high street. It is so seductive to shop online, especially when people are busy, but it is also very easy to keep adding items to the shopping trolley menu and run-up a very large bill. Christmas should be a time of good cheer but I worry that consumer spending will store up problems for the families in the future.
Quite personally I avoid internet shopping like the plague because it is almost impossible to know whether a product is 'too good to be true' without seeing it first. I still think that seeing an item before buying it has to be the best way to shop and one can only do that locally. An old adage is 'Let the buyer beware'.
ENDS
Stephanie Dearden
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson for Tooting
Notes to editors