Christmas shopping push across UK

24 December 2011 Last updated at 16:01 ET

The final bid to visit shops is expected to be followed by online spending on Boxing Day

Millions of people have hit shops across the UK to secure last-minute purchases ahead of Christmas Day.

Many retailers extended opening hours and provided heavy discounts.

Shopping centres across Scotland were busy - especially in Glasgow and Aberdeen - while Belfast's Castle Court also reported brisk trade.

London's Oxford Street was also hectic - with many men leaving gift buying til the 11th hour, a shopping centre spokesman said.

Meanwhile, online shopping association IMRG expected consumers to spend £186.4m online on Christmas Day.

It forecasts that £367.8m will be spent on Boxing Day.

Its estimates were said to represent a 12% increase on the sum spent last year.

"The amount of money consumers spend online every Christmas Day is continuing to show double-digit growth," said a spokesman.

Heavy footfall

Braehead in Glasgow and Union Square in Aberdeen were both reported to be extremely busy, while Belfast's Castle Court reported footfall up by 15% compared to last year.

In recent days some shops stayed open until 23:00 GMT.

Hectic scenes were reported across London's West End where three-quarters of those hitting the shops were men, according to a spokesman for the New West End Company, which represents 600 retailers across Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street.

He said: "There has been a last-minute surge, although we always knew today would be busy.

"The lingerie and perfume counters are heaving. One of the Dior counters said they had their first sale just 13 seconds after opening this morning.

"There are also a lot of people at the Marks and Spencer and John Lewis food counters, where people seem to be panic buying."

Stores were offering discounts of up to 60%, the spokesman added.

More than 600 buses were arriving daily at the Trafford Centre, in Manchester, to deliver shoppers from all over the north of England.

The total footfall at Bluewater shopping centre was expected to be about 750,000 between 20 and 23 December.

A spokeswoman for the centre said there was also a heavy male presence at the site, with the gift wrapping service being particularly popular.

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Violence, pepper spray mars Black Friday shopping

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A shopper pepper-sprayed other bargain hunters and robbers shot at customers to steal their Black Friday purchases, marring the start of the U.S. holiday shopping season, according to authorities.

Up to 20 people were injured after a woman used pepper spray at a Walmart in Los Angeles to get an edge on her competitors. In a second incident, off-duty officers in North Carolina used pepper spray to subdue rowdy shoppers waiting for electronics.

A man was in critical but stable condition after being shot by robbers in a parking lot outside a Walmart In San Leandro, California, at 1:50 a.m. (0950 GMT), Sergeant Mike Sobek said.

The man was in a group of men headed for their car after shopping when robbers confronted them and a fight ensued, Sobek said. The man's shopping companions held down one of the robbers until police arrived and took him into custody.

"It doesn't look like they got away with anything. They weren't expecting these guys to fight back," Sobek said.

In Los Angeles, authorities were reviewing security tapes to track down a woman in her 30s who pepper-sprayed a crowd at a Walmart as customers swarmed for Xboxes on sale late Thursday, Los Angeles police Sergeant J. Valle said.

"They were opening a package to try to get some Xboxes from a crate and this lady pepper-sprayed a whole bunch of people in order to gain an advantage over the Xboxes," Valle said.

Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for U.S. stores.

'SENSELESS ACT'

Off-duty police officers working as security for a Walmart in Kinston, North Carolina, used pepper spray to keep anxious shoppers at bay before the start of an electronics sale at midnight on Thursday, authorities said.

The already "rowdy" atmosphere intensified when employees began to bring out pallets of electronic merchandise, Kinston director of public safety Bill Johnson said.

When customers tried to grab merchandise from the pallets before the sale time, the off-duty officers hired as store security guards for the event discharged pepper spray to restore order, Johnson said. One man was arrested for failing to follow officers' orders, he said.

"No one was pepper sprayed in the face," Johnson said, adding that he was unaware of any injuries.

Walmart is the U.S. discount store unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. A company spokesman, Greg Rossiter, said violence at a handful of stores marred an otherwise safe start to the holiday shopping season at thousands of Walmart stores.

The San Leandro shooting "was a senseless act of violence and our thoughts and prayers are with the customer and his family during this difficult time," Rossiter said.

In another incident, a woman was shot in the foot by a robber who accosted her in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, early on Friday demanding her purse as she and companions put their purchases into a car trunk near a Walmart, police said.

The shopper was hospitalized. Her condition was not known.

A Cave Creek, Arizona, Walmart was evacuated and shopping halted temporarily Thursday night after an apparent explosive device was found in an employee break room, Maricopa County Sheriff's Department spokesman Christopher Hegstrom said.

"We sent a robot in," Hegstrom said, adding that the device was removed and the store was reopened after bomb squad dogs were sent through the facility.

In Manhattan, a group of shoppers upset that Hollister's flagship store was not opening at midnight like other locations apparently broke into the store and stole a large quantity of clothing, police said. No arrests have been made in the burglary.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York, Harriet McLeod in South Carolina, Joe Rauch in North Carolina, Jessica Wohl and Eric Johnson in Chicago, Aman Ali from Ohio, Mary Slosson in Colorado; Editing by David Bailey and Paul Simao)

Continue Reading... Labels: Black, Friday, pepper, shopping, spray, Violence

Crackdown on fake shopping sites

21 November 2011 Last updated at 10:32 ET

The police will continue its campaign against rogue trading sites in the run-up to Christmas

More than 2,000 web shops selling fake or non-existent goods have been shut down by police.

Goods purportedly from GHD, Ugg, Tiffany and Nike had been peddled by the sites, said the Metropolitan Police E-Crime Unit.

It said shoppers had been tempted by low prices.

The unit warned that the goods supplied were counterfeit, adding that many sites had taken payment and then not despatched any products in return.

It said many of the sites had been simply set up by cyber thieves to harvest credit card and banking details.

Precautions

Police officers worked with domain registrars to identify the rogue traders and then used Nominet's powers to seize and shut down the offending domains.

Detective Inspector Paul Hoare from the E-Crime Unit said many gangs registered sites in bulk solely to dupe customers. He said the campaign to close the criminal sites would continue in the run-up to Christmas.

"I would urge customers to take all precautions to ensure they buy from legitimate sites only," he said.

DI Hoare said consumers should check a website's credentials to ensure it was approved and reputable. He said they should also consider using a credit card for payments over £100 and perhaps reserve one card for online shopping.

DI Hoare said shoppers should also be wary of unsolicited offers that arrive via email.

The E-Crime Unit took similar action in 2010 when it shut down about 1,800 sites.

Continue Reading... Labels: Crackdown, shopping, sites