One effect that the internet has had on our lives is the ability to buy globally. You are no longer confined to shopping in your high street – it is often easier and quicker to buy from an internet site anywhere around the world.
There are pros and cons to this approach. If you go about it the right way you can save yourself some serious money, even when the exchange rate is down. And of course your choice is much wider than with local shops, so you can choose from a huge range of digital cameras from Germany or appareils photos from France.
The main things that you need to be wary of, though, are shipping costs, warranty and the level of service if anything goes wrong. Although the base price can be pretty tempting on the internet many do charge very high costs to ship it to you.
And while many of the larger and more reputable companies would still honour warranty if anything goes wrong with it, others would not – and you would have no recourse to get your money back. Even if they did honour the guarantee, you would no doubt waste time and money in having to ship it back.
For that reason, I would not personally order electricals from a foreign website but I have had some good experiences with other types of products such as suitcases where I saved hundreds of pounds.