Shop Safely on the Net: Virtual Mail (BSL / subtitles)
Shop Safely on the Net: Virtual Mail (BSL / subtitles)
Safely navigating the new virtual high street.
It might be hard to remember for most of us now, but online shopping was once a new and bewildering - even frightening - new world. Yes, there were bargains to be had, but the online high street was largely unregulated, scams were common, and in a highly competitive environment, even honest traders could quickly disappear.
This short public information 'filler', made by the Central Office of Information for the Dept of Trade & Industry, offers a few simple tips to help anxious consumers 'shop safely on the net'. Rather disappointingly, it imagines the web - still only a few years old - not as some bewilderingly alien landscape conjured from the outer limits of science fiction, but as an antiseptic, semi-translucent but otherwise pretty much familiar shopping centre, through which slightly dazzled shoppers wander, eagerly browsing window displays.
Recommendations for navigating this consumer wonderland include looking for a real address and phone number, and printing a record of your order - what's notably missing is any advice on what consumers can do if their purchases do go astray.
This version includes ESL signing.
From the collection
How We Shopped
From the high street to the information superhighway: shopping undergoes a makeover.
The 1980s heralded a sea change in the way we shopped - and what we shopped for. Reflecting the growing impact of new technologies, from the arrival of credit cards to the consumer electronics boom and ultimately the internet shopping age, this collection also journeys through the changing face of our high streets into the 1990s and beyond.
This is the era of out-of-town supermarkets and supersized shopping malls muscling in on the traditional town centre trade. Many smaller villages faced the loss of local shops entirely, but they didn't give up without a fight. Alongside these existential threats, local news reports investigate such emerging issues as convenience food labelling, shoplifting and the campaign to 'Buy British' as domestic manufacturing continued its long and painful decline.
Glimpses of long-lost chain stores, brands and products that once dominated everyday life across the UK may inspire more than a whiff of nostalgia. Yet this collection also tells a story of continuity: despite the all-powerful internet, we do still seem to want to come together to shop in the 'real world', not least at Christmas, and those seasonal shopping moments are here waiting to be unwrapped
33 videos in this collection
2
Shoplifting Is On The Increase
7
Round Robin: Think British
8
Debden Village Shop Re-opens
9
Anderson and McAuley Department Store
10
Credit Card Shopping in Northampton
11
Villagers Open Community Shop
14
Yvonne Aston is the New Outsize Model
15
Chinese Supermarket in Nottingham
17
E Numbers in Everyday Popular Products
18
Battle Goes On Over Sunday Trading
21
Shop Safely on the Net: Virtual Mail (BSL / subtitles)
23
One Day in the Corn Exchange
24
St Mary Street - 50 Years On
27
Supermarkets and City Living
28
Oh No... Not Another Manchester A-Z
31
The Commercialisation of Easter
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