You. Yeah, you reading this. You dirty bastard. You’re so depraved and sordid that you’re probably pulling at your genitals as you read this. You’ve probably got something inserted up your hole as well. I bet you’re getting off on my scorn.

You see, historically, we Brits have been branded as being backward in the affairs of the bedroom. We all do it missionary and cum quieter than the lip-smacks of a sleeping dormouse.

Right?

The real truth is that, under all our austerity, we’re actually a set of mucky buggers as fetish products have shown a sharp spike in sales… according to the completely unbiased view of adult retailer, Temptations Direct. We’re all wearing stockings under our business suits like Tory MPs.

It would seem that this recession has stopped us going out, preferring to stay in and rut like farmyard animals. Getting bored of the usual routine, we’ve turned to buying as much equipment as possible from online nacky sites.

In the last 12 months, sales of fetish equipment have sharply risen. Get this:

Restraints – up 390%
Strap ons – up 370%
Fetish penis rings – up 350%
Clamps – up 340%Masks and hoods – up 290%
Chastity devices and whips/canes also saw a strong growth in demand, with an annual rise in sales of 270% and 180% respectively.

Stephen Hackett of Temptations Direct comments: “Fetish imagery is now firmly ingrained in mainstream pop culture and high street fashion, and it’s regularly seen in movies and TV adverts. Meanwhile, fetish clubs such as Torture Garden remain extremely popular amongst UK club-goers. With financial woes compelling Brits to spend more time at home, it’s hardly surprising that sexually liberated adults are increasingly choosing to experiment with bondage, flogging, role play and dressing up in kink-wear.”

So there you have it. You lot are depraved and sick-minded sex-monsters. Feel free to leave your contact details in the comments and the Bitterwallet team will meet you in a lay-by of your choice. We’ll bring our own gimp-masks and wet-wipes.

Do you know your rights? Apparently you do. You may not think you do, whilst you’re sat there, dribbling at your flickering monitor in your stained undercrackers, listlessly flicking dead insects from your hair whilst dreaming of a day when you’ll be allowed to eat Angel Delight dry from the packet wearing nothing more than a dirty grin in a bus-stop… but you are more aware of your rights than ever before.

That’s according to studies by some staggeringly dull people at the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). They’re saying that internet shoppers are more aware of what is just and more online retailers are complying with consumer protection laws than ever before.

In essence, retailers are upping their game because they’re aware that they’re being watched by a horde of e-smartarses.

The OFT carried out a survey of online shoppers and a study of online shops in a follow up to research from 2007 (remember 2007? What a year that was! It was International Heliophysical Year as well as being the year Anna Nicole Smith randomly shuffled off her mortal honkers) which showed that a lot of consumers were completely ignorant of their rights and many sites thought it would be fine to take advantage of it.

The report said, without anything moist to counterbalance the dryness: “Overall assumed compliance and information provision by online businesses has improved with more sites now providing full geographical addresses, and fewer sites imposing restrictions on cancellations,” it said.

Assumed compliance? What does that mean? Apparently, it’s the term used in these studies when sites they examine appear to operate in line with the law.

“A greater proportion of sites reviewed in 2009 appeared to comply on all aspects for which they were assessed,” said its report of its ’sweep’ of retail websites. “While the web sweep covered larger businesses, it is possible that assumed compliance of smaller sites, not included in the review, also improved due to the larger sites setting a higher standard.”

Isn’t that thrilling news? They go on to give woolly figures about how we’re all better equipped when it comes to calling out foul play on retailers who think it’s alright to mess us about. I’d tell you the stats but, to be quite honest, you’d probably try killing yourselves (again) if I typed it all out.

The report also claims that less of you are using price comparison websites. They reckon that’s because we’re more likely to keep going back to familiar sites, rather than concluding that price comparison shopping was on the wane. Whether they’ve looked into the fact that price comparison sites make the most irritating adverts on TV is not clear. I know for a fact that there’s a secret army of people being gathered in an underground lair ready to find the people responsible for the Go Compare commercial, ready to flog them like canines in the street.

So what does all this statistical shit mean? Effectively, it suggests that we’re all a lot more confident when buying crap online… but you chumps probably knew that anyway. Sorry for wasting your time.

[Register]

Right, what have we got for you today in our velvet bag of bargains? Enough cheap milk to fill a lake, some state-of-the-art telly upgradage and a massive one-off saving on your online supermarket shopping. The only thing we’re lacking is a free onion. Perhaps tomorrow.

Don’t thank us, thank HotUKDeals.

As the song goes, “Milk glorious milk! Ripe cow wee plus hot silk!” And it’s glorious milk that is the first ingredient in today’s bargain broth. On the one hand we’ve got two litres of Cravendale (whole and semi-skimmed) for only £1.00. Mooo!

Then, if that doesn’t impress you, there’s also four pints of your regular non-Cravendalised milk in its whole and semi-skimmed forms for only… £1.00! Moooooo! It’s the stuff of nightmares – which will you mooooose? (choose)

Next up today, a range of choices for you to ponder if you’re a Sky telly viewer and have been mulling over whether or not to upgrade to the super-sexy HD way of doing things. Especially as 3D TV should be coming along for HD viewers later in the year.

It seems that Sky are no longer making Sky+ digiboxes and if you need a new box, it’ll be a gleaming HD one. Avid HUKD member craig_1986 has been rounding up the various options and prices, which start as low as… COMPLETELY FREE! HD-remendous!

Finally, a little trick that will help you get £50 worth of online supermarket shopping for only £30 – and because it’s online shopping, you can happily do it in your pyjamas without being branded as some kind of anti-social troglodyte. Which is always nice.

You’ll need to go via a cashback site and enter a magic code in order to get your discount, but £20 off a £50 shop is a gargantuan boon, even without a free onion – and here at Bitterwallet, we’re always on the lookout for gargantuan boons. Oh, and free onions.

(deals found by HUKD members Jas99, parisp, craig_1986 and kingy58)

Britain is a misanthropy festival. The thing that unites us is our inherent mistrust of one another. Latin America is known for passion, North America for it’s appetite and us… we’ve mastered the shifty look at everyone else.

As such, we’ve spend hundreds of years walking in and out of shops and feeling let down by the whole thing. Get someone nice and you sigh inwardly, knowing full well that you only noticed such pleasantry because every other shop you’ll go in that day will be depressing.

If the staff don’t make you ill, then other customers step into the breach. If the humans aren’t the problem, then we’ll find something to gripe about… the in-store music, the lighting, the price, the fact there’s not enough choice, the fact that there’s too much choice… on and on it goes until you return home, defeated.

Then, when our fair isle embraced our internet connections, we started to moan about our ISPs. However, the side-effect was that we didn’t have  to go to the shops anymore. No more getting caught behind those irritating slow-walking idiots who you secretly want to taser within an inch of their life so you can get to a shop 3 seconds quicker just to be let down by the whole affair.

UK shoppers have embraced internet shopping (not that we’ve stopped moaning) and, according to research, spent more online than anywhere else in Europe last year, accounting for almost a third of all European sales.

In 2009, we all spent £38bn online which is an average of £1,102 per shopper, according to the Centre for Retail Research (CRR). Apparently, that’s almost 10% of everything bought in the UK. It’s reckoned that this trend will continue to grow.

“This year is when we will really start to see online sales achieving a significant share of overall retail trade in the UK,” said Bruce Fair, managing director of online shopping and price comparison site Kelkoo, which commissioned the research.

He added that online shoppers were growing in confidence, with the proportion of them prepared to spend more than £1,000 or more on a single transaction rising from 12% in 2008 to 25% in 2009.

“In these hard times, it is no surprise that shoppers are turning to the internet rather than the High Street, especially when you consider that purchasing items online can result in savings of 20% or more,” Mr Fair said.

It’s not surprising that someone who works for an online price comparison site would get results like this, but hey-ho, there you go. People in the UK – sick of farting about in shops. Official.

Next week: Britons moan about packaging and replacement goods from internet shopping.

[BBC]

Buying stuff online is great. Provided it comes when it’s supposed to (I’m looking at you Play.com), it’s a wonderful modern invention. Sit on your arse, press some buttons and wait for someone else to bring it to your house. It saves getting stuck behind dawdlers in the street and dealing with shit-eating grinners who pounce on you the minute you walk into a shop with a “Can I help you?”

Now, those of us in the UK can spend more money (provided you’ve got more money to spend) on the internet from stores in non-EU countries before being charged duty.

HM Revenue and Customs previously had a £120 threshold, but now, that’s been upped. Items bought online will be charged customs duty if the value is above £135.

For the smokers amongst you (can I have twos on that?), you can now bring as many tabs in as you like (for personal use, naturally) into these shores from Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Estonia. These changes came into effect at the turn of the New Year and will also allow people to bring higher value items with them to the UK without paying customs duty or VAT.

What about booze? Well, travellers from outside the EU can bring one litre of spirits or liqueurs that are over 22% proof. Or, if you prefer, two litres of fortified wine (port, sherry, Mad Dog 20/20) or sparkling wine. For the dart players, you can bring in 16 litres of beer, four litres of still wine, and 200 cigarettes (or 100 cigarillos).

In short, let’s get wrecked.

[BBC]

We’ve discussed the point before – that shoppers in the likes of Tesco are becoming increasingly inconvenient obstacles to the grocery-loaded crates of the staff fulfilling online orders. In fact we’ve even mentioned in the past that perhaps the day will come when the only customers at supermarkets are staff making up orders for home delivery. Our readership calls us by many names, but now you can add clairvoyant to that list because the day of “dark stores” has arrived.

Tesco has begun opening a series of these stores which customers will never set foot in. They’ll be laid out in a similar way to a normal supermarket but without checkouts and mislabeled point-of-sale material, and only the staff will walk the aisles – as if working in a supermarket couldn’t be more depressing, now they’ll be hermetically sealed in an anonymous box. It’ll be just like in Moon, at least until Tesco gets to grips with cloning.

The first two stores have been opened in Croydon and Aylesford and a third is due to open next year in Greenford. According to The Telegraph, Tesco currently gets 475,000 orders online per week and 3.4 million visitors to their website. How many Bitterwallet readers can be counted amongst that statistic? Several of you have complained that while online grocery shopping can be more convenient, if there’s a rotting bag of salad to be palmed off or a pack of chicken wings that are best before the day they’re delivered, they’ll end up on your doorstep. If you don’t buy the big shop online, why not?

[Telegraph] photo by Bitterwallet reader Joff

Oh dear. The EU has been sneaking about behind the backs of nearly 400 retail websites selling electronic goods, and hasn’t liked what it’s found. More than half are breaking rules put in place to protect consumers, by failing to inform customers they can return a product bought on the internet within seven days; a third were missing relevant contact information.

The sites investigated all sold mobiles, DVD players and games consoles across the European Union. Except for Slovakia, and we all know why that is, don’t we? No? Of the 369 sites that trading standards groups across the continent picked at, 200 were chosen because they were the biggest in the EU and another 100 were checked because they had received previous consumer complaints.

Every website checked in Cyprus and Hungary was found to require further investigation. Only 14 websites in the UK were inspected, and six of them will receive strongly worded letters that’ll no doubt be placed in the floor level filing depositary for safe keeping. The good news is that any of the websites that fail to rectify the problems will face fines and prosecutions. Probably. The list of websites remains private so far, although three countries have made their lists public.

[BBC]

A few weeks ago, I made an online credit card purchase. The transaction took place in Gibraltar, where the website is run (and no, it was not porn). While this was a small transaction of under £5, within minutes my bank called to inform me that the card has been temporarily blocked.

I was left with what was akin to a limited paypal account. Just with some actual existant customer service.

But when it comes to stopping bank fraud, are UK banks throwing out the baby with the bathwater? At what point does bank vigilance begin to seriously crimp consumer spending?

There is much to be said for hypervigilant banks taking the initiative and trying to stop fraud when they can. You can’t blame them: online bank fraud accounted for £52.5 million in 2008, and “card-not-present” fraud totalled £328.4 million last year. This accounts for more than half of card fraud crimes in the UK.

So should I feel relieved rather than annoyed that they confirmed the transaction with me? The banks have to walk a fine line: they have to be vigilant enough to halt fraud where they can and yet allow customers access to their own money. The online threat of fraud is very real. Since 2006, the Sinowal trojan (also known as Torpig and Mebroot) has compromised 270,000 bank accounts and 240,000 credit and debit cards from financial institutions in the UK, US, Australia, and Poland. Interestingly, no accounts from Russia were compromised. I wonder why.

Have you been pleasantly surprised by your bank checking on transactions you’ve made, or frustrated and annoyed by them blocking your cards / accounts for utterly ridiculous reasons, making it complex for you to lift the block? Do you consider it a necessary intrusion, or do you think they’re going too far and putting the brakes on legitimate credit card spending?

Let’s hear your thoughts!

We might whine about utility bills being higher than Bao Xishun’s forehead and a weekly shop that costs a mint but doesn’t buy that many meals, but is it going to stop us shagging our own finances at Christmas time? Of course not.

It seems those of use with a panache of online shopping aren’t shying away from playing fast and lose with the credit cards this winter. According to research by Deloitte, online Christmas sales are set to increase by 10% this year as more consumers use the internet for their gift and food shopping. Total online spend is estimated to reach £4.7 billion this year, up 10% on 2007.

The research shows that online consumers are planning to spend an average of £773 overall this Christmas compared with £655 for the total population. Not surspringly, the number of retailer’s offering transactional websites has seen another steep rise this year. 81% now offer online stores, up from 71% last year and 51% in 2006.

We’ll say it now, just so we can say we told you so – January will be a very, very long month if you screw yourself in December. Not wanting to sound like your mum or anything.

[RetailBulletin]

Despite several jillion* transactions a day, there are plenty of folk still suspicious of buying goods online. There have been oodles** of scare stories about identity fraud and phishing to justify their concerns, but VISA have launched a special ubercard*** that will put the minds of webflappees*** at rest.

* not a real number
** not a real word
*** also not a real word, but “uber” is an entirely acceptable prefix
**** etcetera

The credit card-sized device (which somehow squeezes a battery inside it) allows you to enter your PIN number, which generates a one-time code. All you’ll have to do is enter that code on on the website you’re purchasing from, and bingo bango bongo, your transaction is complete. Of course, it’ll mean scrapping the way every website payment system works at the moment. And it seems to go head to head with Verified by Visa, so presumably that’ll be phased out to prevent a Betamax vs VHS farce (replace with a Blu-Ray analogy if you’re under the age of 24).

Visa say leading banks may trial the card over the next few months; if the system works without causing brains to melt / implode / ooze from ears like warm coffee, then they may launch sometime next year.

[Gizmodo UK]

That online shop over in Poland that screwed you over?  No problem.  The European Commission is here to your rescue.

The BBC reported new EC proposals for increasing online consumers’ shopping rights across the borders of the 27-nation EU. 

Currently, about 150 million people in the 27 EU countries shop online, of which, 30 million cross borders.  Of the 27 countries, half have no more than 7 days to change their mind after a purchase.

The proposals are looking to change all this.  The result of the proposal may include a ‘nationalised’ 2 week cooling off period for consumers to back out of a sale, better guarantees for repairs/replacements, and the right to refund for delayed deliveries. 

(That is, assuming, you’re not a jerk.)

I’m all for controlling and dictating prices.  It has a distinctly old fashioned socialist feel about it.  Hail, Chávez.  Then again, it’s about time that companies like Paypal and eBay get more regulated.

But what’s with nancy pancy EU directives? What’s wrong with the current system of getting my boys from the hood rollin’ uptown in da white van with their brass knuckles, pick axes, and M-16s from Romania?

(Wait.. Romania is in the EU now, right? Does that mean we soon get 14 days to refund ‘em shooters?  I’ll wait.)

BBC NEWS | Europe | EU to expand e-shoppers‘ rights [BBC]