We walked into our local Kidderminster Staples to buy some printer labels. We saw them advertised on the website for £11.99. We were surprised therefore that they were £17.99 in the store. When we queried the price, the assistant told us that they would price match any website price. Sure enough they offered us the same price, buy stated that they needed to charge delivery for the same amount as the website, which would be £3.48, making the product a total of £15.47. We were in the store with the box of labels in our hands, ready to buy and they were charging us for delivery? To make matters worse if we ordered online and used click and collect, there would be no charge for delivery. So we could go home, buy online and return the next day and collect the exact same box we held in our hands and get it without a delivery charge. Needless to say we have raised this several times via twitter, for them only to respond by sending us to their price match terms. Having read their price match terms there is nothing mentioned about click and collect, which they claim is not covered by the price match feature. But the terms do say that if a competitor has not charged for shipping then they would match the price without shipping charges. Well the website is a competitor to the store, as after all why are they offering price match against their own website? I would certainly conclude that their practice is not consumer friendly and they are misleading the consumer significantly. If you are buying from Staples, I would highly recommend the click and collect route to avoid delivery charges.

I have also reported all this to Samknows, who are taking this up directly with Ofcom.

Hello! In my research to try and reduce my Broadband costs, I researched Sky Broadband for existing Sky TV customers. The offer almost seems to good to be true and it is. I wanted their unlimited Broadband offer, which us £7.50 per month, but for that you also need to buy Sky Talk and Line rental. It very clearly says on their website that the offer for both is £12.25 per month, a real bargain. When you add this to your basket on line, all appears correct it totals to £12.25 and you also get 3 months Broadband free! Fantastic I thought. It cleverly shows you your new monthly amount including Sky TV, excellent, so you know exactly where you stand. I was very impressed. But...when you click through to checkout, you will notice that it has a some fine print at the end of the checkout box, that shows a new monthly amount indicating that your total monthly amount goes up by £7.50 after "the offer ends". So I called Sky and after 20 minutes wasting my time speaking to India, they could not help me and transferred me back to the UK, where after the agent discussed it with 2 of her colleagues, it appears that on the calculation, they discounted the line rental by £7.50 to take account of the free 3 months Broadband. There is no mention anywhere of this and on face value it appears as if you are getting the line rental at £4.75 per month and you won't. But you will get a discount for 3 months on your Broadband. So the total cost per month for unlimited Broadband will be £19.75, which is not that bad, but could be better! Success! Michael Ps. I have written a blog post about this and also recorded a video, which is inside the blogpost, you will see the link for wordpress below in my signature.

Hello I have written a long blogpost, but I can't post it yet, because I have not made enough posts on here as yet. In it I report on my direct experience with Plusnet, where once I said I was leaving them, were able to reduce my price instantly. They were able to do this because my exchange had changed to 'Market 2'! When challenged they said that they decided to reduce prices back in July 2011 and offer this to new customers, but existing customers would get the discount as and when they contacted them. Mmmmm interesting, so if I had not contacted them, they would have kept charging me the same price, i.e. £6.50 per month higher! In actual fact Ofcom advised all providers to amend exchange classification for the market 2 exchanges, back in December 2010, so that everyone could enjoy better prices. I bet not many providers have gone out of their way to tell consumers! I would love to know who got a call from their provider to be told, 'hey you know what the exchange classification has changed and we can give you a massive 36% discount on your current plan". Not very likely. Please check out SamKnows.com and check your exchange and then please challenge your current provider. Good luck!