PriceRunning in the rain

One of the great things about working for a shopping comparison site is that I get to live and breathe my job. PriceRunner uses real-life ‘PriceRunners’ who scour the high street checking in-store prices of some of the biggest electrical retailers in the UK.

This week, I hit the road to collect the prices from five major retailers. In the pouring rain and with a seriously minimal sense of direction, it was never set to be an easy task.

First on my list was Britain’s largest department store, Harrods. Surprisingly, I found my way there without a hitch, but it was only once inside the mammoth department store that my problems really started.

I went up and down the escalators a number of times before admitting defeat and asking the sales assistant with an ‘information’ label clearly pinned to his chest: “Where’s the electronics and stuff?”

I eventually found them on the third floor, along with a vast amount of unbelievably expensive and grand furniture. I was briefly distracted by the fancy beds the size of my house, before moving on to collect the prices of TVs, home cinema systems and DVD players.

On my way down through the maze, I took a slight detour to compare the prices of cute little puppies in the pet department. A French Bulldog puppy will set you back £3,000 in Harrods. If you’re after a quick comparison, they average at around £1,000 on pets4homes.

Next stop: Oxford Street. HMV was simple enough, and with no snazzy furniture, clothing or cute animals around I compared prices pretty quickly. With a new Jane Eyre DVD in hand (mum’s birthday present sorted), I quickly made my way through the GAME store in a similar fashion.

Then came the rain…

Squashing my hood over my hair, I stepped out into the downpour. The only problem now was that I didn’t know where to find my next two shops.

After walking past the Oxford Street Dixons (also known as PC World) a few times, it dawned on me that this was the shop I was looking for. I took the prices, careful not to immerse the laptops and tablets in pools of dripping water.

Luckily for me, my next stop wasn’t too far away. Once I’d collected my prices from Sony, I happily took myself to Urban Outfitters and Topshop for some wind-down shopping before heading home.

So what had I learnt from a day’s PriceRunning?

Unsurprisingly, the same TV in Harrods cost more than in Dixons – the Panasonic TXL47ET5B would set you back an extra £200 in Britain’s largest department store.

Interestingly enough for gamers, Assassins Creed Revelations (PS3) is £10 cheaper in HMV than GAME. Maybe that’s why GAME is going out of business.

And finally, puppies are much cheaper online!