Thanks to avid Bitterwallet reader mizzle for this bargain from Littlewoods. See how long it takes you to spot the issue with it:

Well, it’s obviously a case of Littlewoods entering the wrong RRP, isn’t it? Except the RRP appears to be correct – order the trainers through Very (also part of the Shop Direct group) and you’ll pay the RRP. The catalogue number is one digit different between the two products, even though the trainers are identical – that suggests the trainers were deliberately given different numbers so they could be sold at a different price.

It’s not just this pair of trainers – there are at least another two pairs where there’s a discrepancy in pricing between Littlewoods and Very. Perhaps it’s just Diesel products? Nope. Compare the prices of these jeans – there’s the Littlewoods price and there’s the Very price:

And it’s not just clothing – Littlewoods will charge you £100 more for this sofa, compared to the price through Very. And if you want to buy a TV through Littlewoods or Very:

We’ll ignore the fact that the same model costs £300 less than the Very price when bought at a Sony dealer.

Now the fact is that Littlewoods allow the buyer to pay in installments – however, you’ll still pay the ramped-up prices if you choose to pay immediately. In the case of the Sony Bravia TV, it cost 20 percent more if you buy from Littlewoods, even if you pay in full when you order. Remember; Littlewoods and Very aren’t competitors – they’re the same company.

So are you paying more to account for Littlewoods offering credit to other customers? No. Customers taking long term credit have to pay interest on top of these over-inflated prices. In the case of the TV:

So why do Shop Direct charge up to 20 per cent more (or higher, perhaps – we haven’t checked everything) for exactly the same product, depending on which brand you buy from? Perhaps it’s easier to get an account at Littlewoods with a lower credit score. Or perhaps they want to appear to offer ‘interest-free’ payments for up to a year, by rolling the interest into the price of the product. That would mean a credit agreement over long term would see a customer effectively paying interest on top of interest.

Whichever way you look at this, it’s a poverty tax; Littlewoods is attractive to tens of thousands of consumers because there’s flexibility in the payment options – how many realise that even if they don’t take the credit option every time, they’re still losing out?

Fess up then – how many of you stayed up until midnight on Friday to discover the outcome of the weekend’s REAL voting battle? We’re talking of course about the scuffle between Ryanair and DSGi in our Worst Company In Britain 2009 competition.

In the end, over 1200 votes were cast and by the end, the difference between the two companies was merely a dozen. You can find out the final result here.

Today’s showdown seems a little less glamorous, but could be just as tight. It’s between Littlewoods and Sky. Who do you hate more? Let us know and help send one of these two into the last eight.

All of the results to date can be found here and you’ve got until midnight before today’s vote closes.

Littlewoods seem quite insistent that this XBOX 360 Elite console wireless entertainment pack should be priced the same as a console pack – then again even that’s expensive, since plenty of outlets have a XBOX Elite 360 console pack including two games for far less. The description is for a XBOX 360 Elite but the title and image are for a pack worth far less, so lord knows what you’ll end up with if you order one – the sales process offers finances on the higher figure so we’re not prepared to part with £269 to find out:

Thanks to Matt for tipping us the wink – if you stumble across a fine example of Christmas balls, send them in to bitterwallet@gmail.com.

Here’s today’s first round clash in our Worst Company In Britain 2009 contest – the public vote that’s got the whole nation gripped.

Many of you (and we mean MANY) nominated Virgin Media as the company who had got on your wick the most in 2009. Meanwhile, enough of you threw the name Littlewoods into the mixer for them to be in the final 32 as well. But we’d be stunned if they made it into the last 16. But that’s over to you.

You’ve got until midday on Monday to sort this one out for us. You can also continue to vote in the clash between Orange and Dell here – that one also ends at noon tomorrow. Or you can check out the results to date here. As ever, there’s a picture of a large stuffed giraffe outside a Travelodge for you to enjoy here.

Bitterwallet reader Rob Lynch spotted this customer ‘review’ of a Sony “NWZ-S638f” 8GB MP3/MPEG4 player from Littlewoods.

It starts off well enough, but then the bit right at the end looks remarkably like the sort of report that a customer service agent would fill in after an item had been returned by a customer.

Has this review actually been written by Littlewoods themselves? If it has, how many other reviews on their website are fictional? Can we EVER trust anything Littlewoods ever say to us again? Say it ain’t so Littlewoods!

Still, if they are astroturfing their site, at least they’re not giving everything five-star reviews…

A couple of weeks ago we received an email from a distraught customer of Littlewoods called Mary. According to Mary, the catalogue company had added £500 worth of charges to her account for goods ordered over a six month period, because she had used discount voucher codes circulated online.

Now another case has come to light, this time in the HotUKDeals forums – a member called Toratown claims to have received a phonecall yesterday from Littlewoods’ “fraud department”:

I have been using these vouchers for about a year and all was fine… now the Littlewoods Group solicitors are going to retrieve all the voucher amounts, from all of my accounts.

This has happened countless times before; a quick search of the net will reveal plenty of chatter concerning this in the HUKD forums and elsewhere online. Last year we highlighted a similar issue with Littlewoods attempting to claw back a specific discount which essentially equated to free money, and we eventually got a result for customers.

The issue from the company’s point of view goes as follows: Littlewoods states that discount vouchers are intended for specific individuals and may only be used by them, regardless of whether they appear in public forums – if a third party is found to have used them after the transaction has been agreed and the goods dispatched, then Littlewoods’ terms and conditions give them the right to retrieve the discounts back from the customer.

There are plenty of HUKD forum members who don’t necessarily agree with Littlewoods’ conduct but have in the past pointed out the dangers of using circulated vouchers; they point out that the terms and conditions for using the vouchers apply, regardless of whether a customer reads them or not; in the eyes of the law, ignorance is no excuse and customers who use voucher codes not intended for them are committing fraud.

Then there are those who believe that Littlewoods are in the wrong, both morally and legally; they say that to demand monies up to a year after a transaction is unfair on the customer, and that including a clause in the terms and conditions of a contract does not necessarily mean it has any legal standing. Others question why, after several years of this problem occurring, has Littlewoods not introduced any measures to prevent misuse of codes, such as matching specific codes to specific customers, as countless other online retailers do. These sentiments were summed up by one forum member on HUKD:

Is it possible that they might be deliberately slow in picking people up on using invalid codes – after all, how much more money can you make by sending out codes, letting thousands find them on the interweb, take in a load of orders based on apparently lower prices and then clean up 6 or 12 months later?

Just how long did they take to find these inconsistent usages? It must have been quite a while if one person has managed to build up so many. And it must be pretty bleeding obvious if you send out 1000 codes and get 10,000 people using them that something isn’t working right – so why does it take them so long to work it out?

In fact, why does a company like Littlewoods need a fraud team at all? As others have pointed out, if their systems were set up correctly to check codes against email addresses that the codes were sent to then there wouldn’t be any need.

Clearly there may be customers abusing codes through multiple use across multiple accounts, but when voucher codes intended for individuals (which Littlewoods states they are) can be published and circulated online, sometimes by annonymous sources, then there’s bound to be innocent misuse of them. Bitterwallet is looking into the matter and will get back to you shortly.

Shop Direct group (formerly Littlewoods Home Shopping) has dropped a stunner by closing their Crosby call centre thus axing 1,000 jobs and a further 150 redundancies at their Liverpool headquarters.

Despite this drastic cut, the group claims a “strong and growing” business, claiming the job cuts are due to a decrease in telephone support as the sales shift away from the traditional catalogue to online. Shop Direct announced a 44% growth in online sales over Christmas with the online division now accounting for 56% of the groups sales. Further they noted the group as a whole grew sales 9% over Christmas.

A bit of back-of-the-envelope-Bitterwallet-math indicates the 44% in online sales must be propping declining sales in catalogue business if the group only grew 9% as a whole. Although the massive loss of jobs is definitely not the news Shop Direct employees wanted to receive, does this indicate Shop Direct is on the road to a healthy recovery?

With high street merchants hitting the Deathwatch lists and stalwarts such as Comet and DSGi suffering does the huge online growth of Shop Direct indicate the future of the price conscious merchant is online only?

There is no word on how much the Littlewoods voucher codes contributed to the big uptick in Christmas sales…

[BBC] – Thanks for the heads-up Richard!

When we highlighted the saga of the latest Littlewoods promotional vouchers, we thought we may be opening a whole can of worms with ants in their pants. Plenty of you told us how unhappy you were with the looming threat of having to refund discounts awarded by Littlewoods, because the vouchers were only applicable to particular people and new customers.

We heard from several of you who’d had dealings with Littlewoods in the past, we discussed the matter at length with a solicitor on Friday, and ultimately we couldn’t find a definitive answer for those who had made purchases using the promotional codes. Bugger.

So thank goodness for Littlewoods then, and thank you to a senior manager at the Shop Direct Group for letting us know the following good news:

Further to your article I can confirm that with regards to this voucher code, we will not be reclaiming back from customers, regardless of whether they were eligible or not.

So those of you who frequent the HUKD forums, rejoice and rest easy, safe in the knowledge that both your goods and your bank account are safe and sound.

To paraphrase Dame Shirley Bassey – you’ve seen it before, and you ‘ll see it again, yes you’ve seen it before – just little bits of history repeating. In this case we’re talking about Dame Shirley’s least/most* (delete where applicable) favourite Liverpool-based catalogue shopping empire – Littlewoods – because once again, their online discount vouchers are causing a lot of people sleepless nights.

In July of last year, Littlewoods offered a £25 discount code that was eventually used by 3,000 customers ineligible to use it, according to the company. Over two months after customers had paid for goods and received them, Littlewoods demanded the discount back. Eventually Littlewoods backed down in most cases (although not all), pointing out they would not be so forgiving in the future.

And here we are. HUKD forum member Slash has been in touch with Bitterwallet to tell us Littlewoods recently repeated a similar offer; an online promotional voucher that gave customers £50 off purchases with no minimum spend (the voucher also worked in combination with existing 3 for 2 offers). Seemingly the code was meant for friends and family, and new customers only, although that didn’t prevent it from working for many existing customers. And of course, it’s very simple to set up a second account to take advantage of what was a spectacular offer (the voucher has now expired).

Many people have already received their goods at the discounted prices. So why the sleepless nights? Because nobody is sure whether Littlewoods will attempt to reclaim the £50 discount from customers they believe to be ineligible. Worse still, if they behave as last year, Littlewoods won’t attempt to reclaim the rebate until two months after goods have been dispatched, meaning the date for returning items has long since past; their policy states goods must be returned within 14 days.

The customer seemingly has no choice to pay full price for goods they can’t return and (the more cynical observer might suggest) were baited into buying. (more…)

If someone offers you free money, there’s got to be a catch. Nobody gives away coin. Are they your boss? Then they want to sleep with you. Are they clutching a microphone? It’s a half-arsed promotion for your kerazee local radio station. A reputable high street brand? All above board, surely?

In these dark days we’ve little cash to splash, which is bad news for both us and the people who want us to splash it. So even your favourite stores aren’t above the cowardly use of small print to secure your business, perhaps without you realising it.

Littlewoods, for example. Here’s a recent letter sent to potential customers:

Congratulations! You have been awarded a sum of money to spend as you wish on Littlewoods goods.

Woop!

You were guaranteed at least £15 but it could be £50, £100, £500, £1,000 or even £1,500!

Woop woop!

To claim your award sign the Award Claim Form below and return it promptly in the envelope provided (no stamp required).

These guys think of everything!

Your award will be released within 14 days along with the catalogue from which you can choose your goods. However, please note; we are unable to release your award unless we receive your signed claim form below.

Yours sincerely,

Angele Evans,
Customer Manager

Winnah! It is Littlewoods, after all. They would never try and mislead me. And they used the word guaranteed which means no catches, right? And all I have to do is sign and return their Award Claim Form? Well that seems simple enough, I mean what could poss-

Your claim form will also act as a request to open a Littlewoods credit account for you. If you are not accepted for a credit account, you will not be entitled to your award and will not receive a catalogue.

And there it is, in a font size that’d have Tom Thumb squinting. Surely that means the Award Claim Form is actually a Credit Application Form, and the word guaranteed really means not guaranteed in the slightest.

As if you hadn’t heard it enough – always read the small print. Just ask customers of redsave.com.