Emma Cowing: Christmas shopping hell has to be for real

I have yet to start mine, of course, and twitch with irritation every time someone tells me that they’ve almost got everything, just one more gift to get, and incidentally had they mentioned they sent all their Christmas cards out in the first week of November? Oh please. Pass me the eggnog and an online shopping guide.

I love Christmas, and will happily spend hours putting up decorations, planning menus and listening to old recordings of Carols from Kings. But mention the dreaded “S” word and every molecule in my body starts to rebel. I just don’t have the shopping gene, I never have, so throw in an over-busy city centre, terrible weather, grumpy shop assistants and thousands of similarly stressed-out people deploying their elbows in an effort get their loved ones the perfect pressie, and we’re straying into tearing-your-own-head-off-and-eating-it territory as a more preferential way to spend an afternoon.

No wonder then, that like me, so many are considering doing their shopping online this year in an effort to stave off the stress. It all looks so simple, doesn’t it? A few clicks and taps, feed in your card details and just a couple of days later, your presents arrive, ready-wrapped, on your doorstep.

That’s the theory anyway. But now there’s something else to worry about. According to a senior officer at the Border Agency counterfeit team at Heathrow (he sounds like he’d be fun at parties), the UK market has been completely flooded with counterfeit luxury goods in the run-up to Christmas – and a lot of them end up online.

From Ugg boots to Jo Malone scented candles, jewellery from Links of London to the latest iPhone 4 – it seems no brand is safe now from the threat of counterfeiters, the majority of whom operate in countries such as India, Turkey and China, where 70 per cent of all counterfeit products are made.

According to said senior Border Agency officer, 2011 is the worst year yet for fake goods in the UK. And it’s not just adult gifts that are affected. There is, apparently, a huge market out there for counterfeit kids’ toys, from soft toys from TV favourite In The Night Garden, to Hello Kitty jewellery boxes and Nintendo DS games consoles.

Part of the problem is that these days, more than ever, we’re all after a bargain. With money so tight, the economy so sluggish and yet the pressure to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to consumer products higher than ever, many are pushed into ferreting around the internet, using websites they’ve never heard of before and handing over bank details to goodness knows who in order to save a few quid.

It gets worse though. A recent study by Which? magazine discovered that 23 per cent of fake goods are bought from websites such as online giants Amazon and eBay – the type we rely on as being the real deal. There is no suggestion that the websites thought the goods being sold were anything other than the real deal, but clearly, it’s a worrying statistic.

And fakes these days are good. So good that apparently one in ten of us has at some point bought a counterfeit product and not been aware of it. The packaging looks identical, and at first, products look like the real thing. It’s only when the “iPhone” charger doesn’t work, or the “Links of London” bracelet starts to leave nasty marks round someone’s wrist, that people realise they’ve been had. And for the gift-giver, it can be mortally embarrassing.

With this warning ringing in my ears, I have had to make a reluctant, and somewhat recalcitrant decision. Which is that no matter how good the price online, or how tempting the notion of having everything delivered (and let’s face it, nine times out of ten that means it ends up at a sorting office five miles away and involves standing in a queue for 45 minutes before remembering you don’t have the correct ID and having to go home and come back and endure the whole process again before getting your mitts on the undelivered packages) this year, it’s got to be done in person.

So I shall gird my loins, put on my best elbow sharpeners and brave the crowds, if only because much like Christmas cheer, Christmas shopping is something you just cannot fake.