Londoners set to spend £150million online to beat deadline for Christmas deliveries on 'Manic Monday'

 
Big spenders: online sales are set to rocket on Manic Monday (Picture: PA)

Londoners were expected to spend up to £150 million online today to beat the deadline for Christmas deliveries on what has been dubbed “Manic Monday”.

Internet shopping had traditionally peaked on the first Monday of December — the day labelled Cyber Monday— but later last “guaranteed delivery for Christmas” dates have pushed the final surge later into December.

Retail experts have forecast that consumers will spend £470,000 per minute through today with 151 million visits to retail websites — up 26 per cent on last year. Shoppers spent an estimated £810 million on Black Friday — amid chaotic scenes that saw people fighting in shops to grab heavily discounted bargains — and £720 million on Cyber Monday.

Online retailer Amazon, which sold 5.5 million items in the UK on Black Friday, is offering a series of “lightning deals”, which offer discounts for a specific period throughout today.

Other deals include a 50 per cent discount on 250 top womenswear and menswear items from online fashion retailer Asos, while Body Shop is offering 40 per cent off when customers order buy three items.

Professor Josh Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, said: “Manic Monday will be a significant day but I don’t expect to see the scale of price-cutting that was evident on Black Friday. There will still be the discounts but most of the sales will be down to shoppers worried that certain items could be out of stock.”

Predictions that Manic Monday could beat the frenzied buying of Black Friday appear not to have been realised with online transactions between midnight and 9am running at less than a third of the level of that night, according to analysts Big Data Labs.

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