Rakuten.co.uk: Shopping is entertainment

[michelle@imutual]

Rakuten.co.uk

Rakuten.co.uk is the UK arm of one of the largest marketplaces in the world; offering a huge number of products with carefully selected merchants across a variety of categories.

See reward offer for Rakuten.co.uk

[Sarah]

Rakuten UK to close by end of August:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 ... ess-Future

[Chadwick]

I don't think they did a good job of changing play.com into rakuten. Play.com used to be a good place to shop, but when the brand disappeared, it dropped off my radar almost completely.

[Sarah]

I've been a regular Rakuten customer thanks to the constant stream of generous discounts and bonus points offers (genuinely up to 40% off everything on occasions) but this must have cost them a fortune so surely wasn't sustainable in the long term and the site is also pretty awful to use.

Like you say, dropping the play.com site and brand seems like a big mistake -- they've been too determined to have a single global platform rather than resolving the problems with it.