I nearly fell for the Amazon Christmas chocolate rip-off
It’s the first week of December and if you’re as busy and snotty and utterly knackered as me, you’ll also be slumped on the sofa at 10pm doing your Christmas shopping on Amazon.
Good old Amazon. Many of us wonder where we’d be without the sheer convenience of its Prime service, especially at this time of year. Four tubs of Quality Street to arrive by midday tomorrow? In the bag, thank you very much. And what’s this? A tray of 12 Chocolate Oranges delivered the same day? That’d cover the nursery staff, cleaner and cat sitter’s gifts until 2024. In the bag.
But if you assumed, as I did in my sleepy state, that these bulk buys would be sure to save you money, you’d be very wrong indeed.
My finger hovered above the “buy now” button for a bundle of four tubs of family favourites, two chocolate oranges and a tacky bauble at £33.95 before I decided to check the price of the individual items elsewhere. And thank goodness I did.
The tubs were available for £5 each at Sainsbury’s and the Chocolate Oranges were £1 a pop at Tesco. Tot it all up and excluding the bauble (which surely can’t cost more than around 50p?), the entire £33.95 bundle was worth just £22. There, in my living room sitting in the crumbs of several Hobnob biscuits, I had nearly been taken for a fool.
And what about the bulk-buy tray of 12 Chocolate Oranges, did that not provide a tidy saving either? You’ve probably already guessed, but at £19 it came in at 50pc dearer than individual ones bought at supermarkets.
It warranted a delve into some of Amazon’s other Christmas chocolate, which showed this was just the tip of the iceberg. Far worse was to come.
A twin pack of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges was available for £6.45, meaning each orange cost £3.23, more than three times Tesco’s price. I also found a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate house set for £33, an eye-watering three times the £12 price tag generally adopted by other retailers.
But the worst offender was a charming little 50g five-pack of Lindt Santa
Our dear friend Amazon and its ‘third party’ sellers can sometimes be more of a Scrooge than a Santa
and Reindeer chocolate figurines, available via one Amazon seller for £8 when one could pay four times less (£2) to buy one at Waitrose.
The reviews for the Lindt set made depressing reading. Many buyers said it had arrived shattered in pieces, while others believed they were buying five packs for the price of four (rather than a pack of five).
When I asked Amazon, it said all of the above prices were set by third party sellers and that better deals were available elsewhere on the site, mainly through Amazon Fresh.
Some reading this may have no sympathy for anyone who pays an Amazon seller £33 for a chocolate house without checking its true value. They are probably the same people who have time to do all their Christmas shopping at a leisurely pace at lovely Christmas markets and the like. What kind of idiots would buy this overpriced fodder, they may ask.
Well, I’ll tell you who. It’s people like me who are just trying, and sometimes failing, to please everyone amid the frenzy of the December to-do list. If you’re in this camp I see you, and I hope this article saves you a few quid.
Just remember that as much as it is a gift at this time of year, our dear friend Amazon and its “third party” sellers can sometimes be more of a Scrooge than a Santa.
And that is why this year I have bought all my Christmas chocolate at Sainsbury’s.