Almost everything I buy has to be ordered online as in the uk there are really no high-street shops which sell anything worthwhile. Mostly the process is easy: I order things, and then they arrive the next day or the day after that. The catch is that you don't find out how good an online retailer is until something goes wrong. At that point you find out very quickly which retailers are good and which aren't, but it's too late.
My heart sinks when I realize that I bought something from a company with no contactable customer service; or whose idea of customer support is people in a different continent who don't speak my language or know our laws; or who simply fob me off with the manufacturer's warranty. I know I'm going to win, and I know it's going to cost them dearly whilst they watch me do it, but still it's depressing to have to go through this when you just want what you paid for.
It would be good if there was some sort of internet rating service for this type of thing. There are a few places which claim to provide that, but I've not found them useful in practice. So here's my contribution: a little list of the good and the bad retailers I've dealt with. This isn't an exhaustive list - I left the kinky stuff out of it, plus I can only list retailers where the things I bought broke for one reason or another. The others are all still "unproven".
good retailers
scan.co.uk - computer hardware and software
Scan are excellent. Their prices are good, and they ship quickly. On two occasions over the years I've had gear from Scan which was dead on arrival or which subsequently broke. In both cases their UK customer support people were on it immediately, each case being dealt with by one individual who was able to use both email and telephone. In the first case Scan actually sent out a replacement item before collecting the broken one - this is precisely the right thing to do, but it's surprisingly rare to find.
REI.com - outdoor gear (USA)
REI is a co-operative, but it's also the best outdoor gear store I've ever found. That's all good, but the best bit is when things go wrong - they have a returns policy which exceeds what you get by rights in the UK. Specifically, if you buy something you can just take it back for a full refund or replacement within 12 months, no questions asked. I'm not sure how that works in the small print, but I bought a $600 gizmo from REI in Alaska and used it for 11 months. I took it back as one of the accessories was broken and I wanted to buy another. The accessory wasn't a retail item, so REI just offered to replace the whole $600 unit because I'd broken one $5 clip for it! That's good enough for me: if you're not happy, they're not happy.
I've bought a lot of gear from Warehouse Express and like everything else most of it works. Only on one occasion did I have a "dead on arrival" problem, with a rather expensive memory card for a camera. Warehouse Express sent out a replacement immediately, without waiting for me to return the useless device. They were polite, apologetic and efficient.
bad retailers
Dabs.com - computer hardware and software
Back in the day Dabs were quite good, or at least I had no trouble with them. More recently something I bought from them failed, and I realized that they don't actually have any customer service details on their website. There's no phone number for "help me, your stuff is broken!". I just checked again and they don't seem to have fixed this. It's interesting that they spend so much time and money making it easy for you to see their products and buy them, but very little on systems to sort out problems. They do have an email address, but when I had to use that it was answered by unintelligent electronic systems. Eventually I got through to a human in some foreign country who was clearly not being paid to solve my problem: their goal was to make me go away, not to make me go away happy. Ultimately Dabs tried to fob me off with the manufacturer of the goods, who had a equally poor UK support.
Fortunately I bought with a credit card so I just threatened a charge-back. I don't like doing business with people I have to threaten, so Dabs is in the "bad" class.
clove.co.uk - mobile phones and accessories
I know mobile phones are garbage, but I'd bought a few from Clove and had no problems. Then I had a phone which broke a few months after I bought it. There was no problem in contacting them, but they assumed that any failure of the device was a customer problem, and even suggested I pay them a significant amount for a "third party" report to prove them wrong! They claimed that as they'd had no reports of the failure I'd had, it must be my fault. I think they must have thought I was a kid they could push around - I don't see why they should treat kids like that anyway, but in this case I'm probably old enough to go out with their mums, although I refrained from telling them that.
I'd had the phone too long for a straight charge-back, so I took legal advice and threatened court action. They fixed the phone.
I don't want to deal with people who accuse me of very bad things, or who I have to remind of their legal obligations.
Both of these bad retailers took the initial position that I was the problem, not that I had the problem. All their efforts were aimed at getting me to go away. Little or no effort went into actually solving the problem, and none at all into making it a reasonable experience for me as their customer. Clearly these retailers have made the choice to operate that way, and I guess it must work commercially most of the time. So I think they can have no objection to me posting my experiences with them here.