"You just have to pick a bat up! Selling bats online will never be as good as in the showroom!"
Really???
Its time to learn from our wives and girlfriends about buying a cricket bat!
Now if you are reading this blog you must be a cricket "Badger" (someone whose whole personality is cricket) like me, and as such it is highly unlikely that any of you have wives or girlfriends, so let me explain.
When a lady or a man (though mostly ladies in my limited experience) want to buy clothes online, they do a large bulk order. But, though they often spend an extortionate amount (at least mine does), they don't intend to keep all the clothes, they want to try them on and see what they look like, which you can't do online. They will then return the clothes they don't like (sometimes all of them) and only pay for the ones they love.
This is very efficient and it has several advantages, as it combines the convenience of a large selection, filtering and sorting online, with the benefits of going to a shop and trying clothes on, getting the best of both worlds and saving significant amounts of time in the process (assuming you you are prepared to be productive while waiting for delivery).
So why don't we do the same for cricket gear???
Well, we should, all cricket retailers offer returns and most of them are cheap or even free, the key is to read the returns policy of your chosen site and make sure there are cost-effective options to return. Prodirectcricket for example has an excellent returns policy. Don't be afraid to email the retailers with questions.
So, (1)select the bats that suit your style the best from the online retailer's enormous selection, order as many as you want, then (2) when they arrive pick them up feel them and see the actual bat in person and (3) once you have selected the best one(s) return the others!
Below is Prodirectcricket's return policy which is one of the best, they even have a video showing you how to return which is also below and a link to their store.
So we can see that going to try a bat at a shop is almost a thing of the past, with the advent of the online retail age and the rise in cheap and free returns, the need to go to a shop is now becoming less and less, especially when we lead frantically busy lives we don't need the extra hassle of going to the cricket showroom, which are often few and far between, nice though it is.
Thank you for reading my blog, let me know what else to blog about in the comments below!
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