Where necessary involve your credit card supplier. Be aware of your card details and the telephone number to call if you have to quickly cancel the card. Having found an item to purchase there can be a delay between making payment and receipt of the goods. In this arrangement the payment is made to a third party who will only release the goods once the buyer has received the goods and confirmed that they are acceptable. If you wish to buy from an lesser known company it may be worth making an initial small purchase to see that their order fulfillment is acceptable.
Taxation can be an issue if the item is purchased from outside the UK or Europe.
Mail delivery companies are obliged to apply taxation rules when items are delivered from one country to another. If the goods need to be returned this can add to the complexity in recovering tax paid. Our business is Internet consultancy and software development. We enable our customers to implement the best performing web sites as measured in operational performance. We use this web site to link to our favourites, to try out new approaches and technologies and always to better understand how the Internet works.