When it comes to shopping, I’m a rather lazy chap. I can’t stand wandering round shops, trying to find something interesting – I’d much rather be drinking or sleeping. As such, I’ve always been a huge fan of mail order shopping, which despite its tacky image is often an extremely convenient alternative to the rigours of the high street. I’ve shopped with Freemans on and off now for about nine years. Although I only buy something once every few months, I’ve always found Freemans to be largely hassle-free. In writing this review, I’ve opted to give a summary overview of this means of shopping, with subsequent detail on aspects that I like and dislike. This is not intended to be a complete user guide to shopping, but I hope will provide the necessary detail to enable an informed consumer decision.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SHOPPING WITH FREEMANS

Catalogue shopping often seems to attract a rather down market reputation and is seen by many as a means of shopping by people who haven’t got much money. I think this is grossly unfair, and suspect that this observation is more often made by those people who have never tried shopping this way. The Freemans catalogue contains over one thousand pages of items and stocks a huge range of clothing, footwear, toys and games, electrical appliances and household goods. Each item is displayed in colour, with a unique reference number, which you need to quote when placing an order. Orders are despatched directly to your home, by courier, after which you have a fourteen day period in which to decide whether you want to keep the item or not. If you keep the item, you can subsequently pay in full, in short-term interest-free instalments or in longer-term credit options. You can order items for yourself or for friends and family and each customer will receive his/her own statement of spending and payments. As the agent, you also earn 10% commission on all sales made – which realistically means a 10% discount on all prices shown in the catalogue. It’s quite a versatile way of shopping and offers many advantages:

 You can try on clothes at home.
 All deliveries and returns are free
 You have 14 days to see whether you want to keep something.
 Heavy goods don’t need to be carried home.
 You have a huge choice of items to choose from.
 You can potentially earn money by selling items to friends and family.
 You can defer payments without paying interest (why pay for something until you have to!)

The main drawback to shopping in this way is that the catalogue prices are generally much higher than you would pay elsewhere, with percentage differences of up to 30% not uncommon.

PRODUCT RANGE

Freemans’ product range is very good, with a fair selection of most items. I quite like a lot of the men’s clothes – all quite trendy – and I often spot things that I haven’t seen in the shops. All the top brands are on offer with the electrical goods, but there is a lack of cheaper brands, so prices generally seem quite high. The convenience of these catalogues is that everything is in one place – perfect for trying to think of Christmas presents. They also offer financial products – loans, insurance etc – but a cursory glance of their rates means that I wouldn’t even consider recommending these things.

ORDERING AND DELIVERY

I always place my orders by telephone, because I tend to have questions to ask. The Freemans web site has never been terribly user-friendly, and given that the order line is a free telephone number, ordering in this way suits me completely. Freemans regularly mail out special offers, such as free gifts or buy now pay later options and if you want to take advantage of these, you have to quote special order codes. Whilst I think it is a nice idea to offer these extras, you often tend to forget to quote the codes and I think it would be nicer if the agents asked you if you had any offer codes, as a friendly reminder. The ordering process is simple enough – you simply quote an item code and any size or colour options – and provided you order in time, you can also place an order for next working day delivery (costs £3 extra).

One tip for Freemans – please stop trying to plug your daily special offers. If people want pillows or tea towels, they’ll probably not need to be asked if they would like some.

My greatest frustration with ordering goods from Freemans is probably related to the availability of stock. Unless you are ordering items as soon as a catalogue is published, you often seem to struggle to get items straight away – particularly where clothes are concerned. I am often quoted a delivery time of four to six weeks, which is more often than not far too long to wait.

A local courier – a self-employed person, who delivers and returns parcels on behalf of the catalogue companies, makes the delivery for most items. This method works extremely well, as once you become familiar with the courier, you can start to build up a personal relationship and arrange deliveries at certain times, or to be left in certain places. Although you can also return items free of charge at the Post Office, using your courier is definitely the best way. If you place orders for big items, such as furniture, then these will be delivered by lorry. This generally takes longer – I’ve only ordered one large item and the good arrived before I was notified that they would. As with most professional delivery companies, goods delivered in this way will not be offered within a time window, and you don’t get a personal level of service.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

I have very few complaints about Freemans’ customer service, and my account has always been managed professionally. The order line is open 24 hours a day, as is the help line – although the latter is not free of charge, which would be a nice gesture. There are common mistakes though. If you order several items of the same type, but in different sizes, when you return them, only one seems to get taken off your account and you always have to phone the help line to get them to correct the account. The customer service advisors seem well informed though, and my queries have always been dealt with first time. Agents generally get mailed various offers for free gifts – I’d rather they used the money to discount the prices, as the gifts are virtually worthless.

ADMIN AND PROCESS

Mail order catalogue shopping has traditionally involved quite a bit of paperwork, with account forms, return receipts and invoices all needing to be stored and processed. This was greatly improved several years ago, when the company introduced customer statements, eliminating half the paper work overnight. The statements are well laid out – rather like a credit card statement – and identify balance, minimum payment and orders placed. The statements also display your current commission balance and if you want to, you can use this cash to pay for goods on the catalogue. With a number of companies, commission redeemed in this way is often offered at a rate of 12.5% or more, but with Freemans this is fixed at 10%.

Up until a few months ago, when returning items, you had to complete a rather exhaustive slip in a return book, but this was replaced with a new perforated invoice that also contained a return docket. This was all very well and good, but the company never communicated the change, nor did they explain which bits of the new invoice were supposed to be retained and which were supposed to be sent back. Much confusion has reigned since, and when I last returned something I used the old book, because I knew what to do with that. I think Freemans need to simplify – or explain – the new return procedure.

PRICING AND SPECIAL OFFERS

Most promotional activity tends to be about delayed payment options, rather than money off. Occasionally, a discount on a certain range will be offered, but normally the catalogue prices remain constant. They do have regular sale brochures, which feature good discounts (up to 50% but only on certain sizes or colours of product). I would like to see a few more individual special offers as Freemans has a long way to go in becoming more competitive. The difference in prices is sometimes very little, but can be a lot – a Sony Playstation 2 will currently cost you £110 more on Freemans than it will in Dixons. However convenient this type of shopping is, you can’t ignore these sums of money.

RUNNING AN AGENCY

I have only sold items to one friend, purely because she had seen an article about some shoes that were exclusive to the catalogue. It was a relatively hassle-free process, but I felt that had it been on a bigger scale, with lots of people, I would have tired of collecting the money each month. If other people do buy things, and fail to pay the money, they are personally liable, but bear this in mind with friends who aren’t too good with cash – it could spoil a beautiful friendship. They have also recently introduced a loyalty scheme for the best agents whereby, according to your annual spend, you are enrolled in a certain club (e.g. Gold, Silver, Platinum) and offered increased benefits according to each. The top agents have to have a turnover of £40,000 per annum to get the benefits. That’s an awful lot of shoes!

MY VERDICT

For certain items, Freemans suits me because I can do everything from the comfort of home. It’s not a replacement for high street shopping though, and I would struggle to find most of the things that I want in this catalogue. Prices are quite high, but if you can get £40,000 worth of sales a year (!) you could make a lot of commission and get good discounts. The level of service is good but do hold onto receipts and invoices as mistakes do seem to be made fairly frequently. I would recommend trying them out, if only to get an introductory offer or discount!

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