General Retail
Shop prices are rising again — where the increases actually landed
Shop prices rose 1.5% in the year to August, the fastest in over two years. Food did most of it at 2.8%, and the cupboard shop rose faster than the fresh one.
Three reviews. One straight answer.
Most product pages give you one opinion and a buy button. Shopbam finds three independent reviews of the same thing, shows you where they agree, where they contradict each other — and tells you what nobody has actually tested.
How a Shopbam review is put together
- 1Find three sources An editorial test, a community of owners and a verified-buyer rating block — and we say which is which.
- 2Watch it in action Every source section carries a video of the product, so you can see it before you spend.
- 3Say what's missing Every review ends with what we could not verify. If nobody has tested it, we will not pretend otherwise.
Latest reviews
Browse Leisure →
General Retail
Claire’s closed 154 shops, then started reopening — what that means for you
Two administrations, every standalone UK shop shut in April, about 1,300 jobs gone — and 356 concessions that never closed at all. The distinction matters at the till.
Leisure
Coleman Coastline 3 Plus: the reviews split down the middle
Four UK campers rate it 5.5/10 and split two-and-two. A gear blog gives it 8.6. Here is what separates the happy owners from the ones who packed up at 2am.
Leisure
Mountain Warehouse Summit 300: warm enough, heavy enough
A £25 mummy bag rated to a proper European standard, liked by 86 owners — and four retailers publishing four different temperature ratings for it.
Leisure
Rab Ascent 300: the bag people mean by "Alpine Trek 300"
There is no Rab Alpine Trek 300. The bag you are looking for is the Ascent 300 — good down construction, never a bargain at full price, now half price and discontinued.
Leisure
Vango Latitude 200: a DofE bag worth buying used
Plan around +2°C, ignore the −20°C on the label, and expect it to eat rucksack space. Discontinued, barely reviewed, and still the right bag for a school expedition.
Leisure
Quechua Arpenaz 2: a two-person tent, not a three
4.7/5 from nearly 4,000 Decathlon ratings and two hands-on tests. They agree it is a lot of tent for £30 — and agree on exactly where it runs out of room.
Leisure
Vango Soul 200: what three sources actually found
One magazine round-up, six community reviews and a retailer rating block agree on the same three things — and disagree about whether two adults fit.
Bathroom
Triton Aspirante: an installer and 300-odd buyers weigh in
No consumer title has tested it. What exists is one installer who rates it above the rest of the Triton range, and several hundred verified buyers — including the ones who dislike the phased shutdown.
General Retail
Victoria Plum has gone — what that means if you bought from them
Administration in 2023, sold to its biggest rival, and stopped taking orders in November 2024. What happened to the guarantees, and the two ASA rulings worth knowing about.
General Retail
Boohoo buys Debenhams: what £55m actually bought
A name, a website and a customer list. No shops, no stock, no staff. Five years on, the name has swallowed the company that bought it.
General Retail
Debenhams: two administrations, 118 shops, and a name that outlived the business
A 242-year-old chain filed twice in nineteen months and ran out of buyers three weeks before Christmas. What happened, and where the name ended up by 2026.
DIY
Dehumidifiers for damp: the two numbers that decide it
Room temperature decides compressor or desiccant. And a 20-litre machine puts out about eight litres a day in a real British house — the box figure is measured somewhere you do not live.
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General Retail
General Retail
The business side of UK retail: sales figures, shop closures, new store openings, takeovers and the chains behind them. Not product reviews — those live in the section the product belongs to.
Retail Parks
Retail Parks
Every significant out-of-town retail park, shopping centre and designer outlet in the UK — where they are, what is in them, how to get there and when they open. Grouped by region.