Rakuten - www.rakuten.co.uk

I had £75 of points from a previous purchase so I bought 2 games, one was cancelled and the other has disappeared in the post. The points haven't been refunded from the cancelled order and no one will respond to my emails about the missing item. Utter rip off merchants.

Requested an Ipad with one of their merchants, price was too good to be true but I did the purchase anyway.

After placing the order everything seemed to be fine until the deadline for the dispatching come. Then suddenly the item appeared as delayed and all the problems started.

The merchant had no idea as when they could serve the item and they were not providing feedback about any estimation at all. Rakuten don't have a direct contact with the merchant just through the email, so they can't provide much more information that what they have in their site.

Finally and last, the merchant charged the item anyway although they have not sent anything at all. I had to speak with my credit card company, who actually said that I need to get proof that the merchant has tried to return the payment. Hopefully this will happen as if not I will be ripped off 400£.

Be careful where you buy in Rakuten, as it's not as good as it looks. I won't be buying here anymore.

I bought a LG G4 phone from Rakuten at a very good price. It was a good price if you deducted the monetary value of the points from the price I paid. However I am now struggling to find anything I want to buy.

I needed a mains operated digital clock with a large screen. I found one at Rakuten, but I bought it at Argos at half price.

The other clocks that I saw at Rakuten were not particularly cheap.

The points I have got are time limited. I have only about four weeks to use them. So I am exploring the Rakuten site for things to buy. In the end, I will probably buy something I do not really need or want.

I have to admit, this has to be one of the most under-rated sites out there. It is from the Rakuten group who own Play.com; I think they are going to do the same as what they did with the US (buy.com) site and redirect it to the rakuten.co.uk site eventually, but for the moment it looks to be 3rd party sellers and some of their own things on offer. I was looking at some of the reviews from customers and everyone seemed to be happy with the prices, and to be honest I couldn't find the few things I was looking for anywhere cheaper (as Google doesn't rate rakuten so doesn't show up in it's search results, and certainly not the 'paid' google shopping which is a joke now as all the people that could afford to sell it cheaper than the big stores got priced out by the big boys who could pay 20p per click)... basically it seems to have those deals I thought I had lost, because Amazon and eBay seem to charge their sellers too much in fees, which in turn it passed on to us making us pay more!

Rakuten is a Japanese company which owns online marketplace websites around the world. In 2014 they purchased the popular British website play.com in order to gain a foothold in the UK market. In late 2014 they established their own UK website simply called Rakuten. They are up against three giant online marketplaces, namely eBay, Amazon Marketplace and (strangely) their very own Play. What sets Rakuten apart from the competition is that it's a marketplace exclusively for larger trustworthy sellers such as Base, GameSeek and SpeedyHen. This sets it apart from it's rivals which all allow anyone to sell goods. Whether you consider that to be an advantage or not is entirely up to you, and will likely depend heavily on your past experiences with such sellers on other online marketplaces. Obviously this limits the range of goods available, especially when compared to Amazon Marketplace or eBay, but at least you don't have to sift through countless 'customer feedback' comments before deciding if you can trust the seller with your money. Currently only a relatively small number of merchants have listed their wares for sale, and they all seem to charge more than they do on their own websites which can make Rakuten seem largely redundant. However, this is counteracted somewhat by the regular discount vouchers they have been issuing.

I have nothing much to say about the quality of their customer service as you should only need to talk with them when something goes very badly wrong, which thankfully has not yet happened. It would also be inappropriate to comment on dispatch/delivery times and packaging as that is not Rakuten's responsibility, that lies with the merchant and the Royal Mail/courier company. The website design is perfectly functional, with no particular advantages or weaknesses when compared to it's rivals.

So in summary Rakuten is worth a look at the very least, but if you have no problems using Amazon, Play, etc then you probably won't find anything too interesting here outside of the occasional voucher. And if you do find something you want at a good price then you would be better off finding the merchants own website and buying direct from them, it will probably be a little cheaper.

I like that they offer great discount and you can find vouchers all over the internet.

I used to buy a lot in another famous online department store, but I found out about Rakuten and fell in love with them. I like the most their customer support. Also, it's easy to find a discount voucher. They have a large list of items of every product (different sizez, models, etc.).