The Frustrations of On-Line Shopping.

Warning - grumbling moaning coming up.

Now don't get me wrong, on-line shopping is high on my list of Favourite Things To Do. It's up there with sleeping, eating cake, watching Prison Break and cuddling my dog. But it does frustrate me a lot on occasion. Some things are no-one's fault in particular - like the beautiful Scarlett & Jo dress I bought a couple of weeks ago and which was too long, so looked weirdly frumpy on me. But the thing that really vexes me, that REALLY annoys me is the lack of consistency with sizes. I'm not talking about the "size up if you like it baggy" or "size down if you like it snug", it's when things should fit and they bloody don't. It's so frustrating. I don't know about you but I don't always have the funds available to order 2 of what I want to order, with the view of returning one. It's particularly annoying when it's from somewhere you shop from regularly and know the size you usually are (yes New Look Inspire, I'm talking to you)... I bought a lovely Inspire dress the other day, yes okay it was from ASOS but that shouldn't make any difference should it? It arrived yesterday and it looked shit. It was too tight around the middle but weirdly massively too big across the chest and shoulders. So no point in ordering the next size up as the girls would literally be hanging out for all the world to see.

Why IS this? And while I'm on the subject what's the crack with the difference in sizes from shop to shop? I'm a pretty standard size 24 so surely a 24 should fit me everywhere I buy? No. I can be anything from an 18 to a 26 depending on where I'm buying from. We don't have this problem with shoes do we? Generally (I know there will always be the odd exception) shoes fit, no matter where they're from. I'm a size 4 and I've never, ever, not once, had to deviate from that. Sometimes I'll choose to size up (winter dog walking boots for example, so I can get massive chunky socks on) but in "normal" circumstances I never have to. Why can't clothes be the same? I've been Googling for a while now and while I can find plenty of examples of people (all women funnily enough, there doesn't seem to be this massive variation in men's clothing) complaining about how they vary in size from shop to shop, I can't actually find anything to explain why.

Pah. I know there's more important shit going on in the world and when all's said and done it's not quite the end of the world... but it's annoying me today and it's my blog so my right to moan ;-)