London Evening Standard/London
Shoppers flocked to Oxford Street as early as 7am yesterday to line up for bargain deals in the Boxing Day sales.
Pictures posted online showed shoppers queuing in their hundreds to get into high street shops in central London as the doors opened.
Twitter user Kate Jones posted: “My 2 kids left at 7am heading to Oxford street - they are madder than mad!”
Kam Sidhu wrote: “Oxford Street shopping on Boxing Day... I must be mad.”
In central London queues formed around luxury department stores Selfridges and Harrods where designer goods were sold at discounts of up to 50%.
Liberty and House of Fraser also offered designer goods at a fraction of their usual price, while both Next and Marks & Spencer launched discounts of up to 50% on sale items.
Westfield director Myf Ryan said Boxing Day remained a “huge attraction” for shoppers.
He said: “Last year we had queues out of the door on Boxing Day by 5am, retailers like Next and Zara experienced record sales and 360,000 shoppers visited our two centres on the day.
“This year too was an exceptionally busy day, fuelled by excellent retail offers and special deals with over 50% off by many of our 600 retailers.”
There were scenes of huge queues up and down the country as bargain hunters turned up at their favourite department stores.
Online shoppers were expected to have spent £748mn yesterday, or £519,000 a minute, and made 167mn visits to retail sites - up 29% on last year, according to data firm Experian and online retailing trade association IMRG.
Experian general manager of consumer insight, Giles Longhurst, said: “This year has seen record breaking online shopping rates, particularly on Black Friday, which saw an astronomical £810mn in estimated spend due to the massive resources put behind promotions by a wide range of retailers.
“Traditionally, the Boxing Day sales have been the busiest day for retailers in the UK, but this year we expect them to come second to Black Friday.” An estimated 142mn visits were made to retail websites on Thursday, a 25% increase on last year.
Earlier, Tesco Direct predicted sales of more than 5,000 televisions and more than 2,000 games consoles, and Asda predicted more than 2mn shoppers would pass through its doors.
A survey for the price comparison website Confused.com found that more than a third of Britons (34%) have bought Christmas presents for people during the post-Christmas sales.
More than one in seven of those who bought presents in the sales (16%) did so because they were not visiting family until December 27 or later.
The new retail ombudsman, Dean Dunham, who takes up his new role on January 2, said he expects his first task to be sorting out disputes caused by frantic Christmas shopping and New Year sales bargain hunters.
He said the most common complaint would be from thousands of consumers refused refunds or replacements because the packaging has been opened.
He said: “If the goods are not faulty, the law places no obligations on the retailer so you have to examine their terms and conditions.
“If their terms say the retailer will not accept returns where packaging is damaged or missing, and most terms do, the retailer will be perfectly within their rights to enforce this.”