Buying Online We keep hearing how brick and mortar stores are going out of business due to all the buying online. There is no doubt buying online is very convenient. You can even get next day delivery sometimes and have gifts shipped directly to the intended person. What you never seem to hear much about is the problems with buying online and I have had my share of them as I am sure anyone who has been buying this way for a few years has. When you buy online you can’t actually touch the item or try it on but I guess this has to be weighed against the fact you can go to an item, click on buy and you are all done with your purchase in just a few minutes. Let’s talk about some problems I had buying online over the years. Just recently I purchased a pocket computer being advertised on Facebook. It was a great price so I went for it. I got a conformation a couple of days later but waited over two weeks for a shipping notice. I wrote to the company and they said they were sorry and very busy would I please wait for a couple of more days, so I did and they did send me a shipping notice, but it was from China. Now I had to wait another couple of weeks until it finally came. I was very excited and opened the package. Remember I told you I ordered a computer? Well when the package was opened there was only a pair of sunglasses in it. Sunglasses which I never ordered. I asked for a refund and as of the writing of this article I am waiting for an answer. Another problem I had was when I purchased a printer from a vendor on Amazon. I received the printer without a problem, but a few days later I received another one. I called Amazon and explained what happened and told them I received a duplicate order and wanted to return it and asked for a prepaid return label. She said they couldn’t do that but not to worry because I had not been charged for the second printer. I asked her what to do and she said keep it. I explained I didn’t feel right about that but she insisted she could not give me the label but I didn’t have to worry and should just keep it. About three months went by and then I was contacted by Amazon and asked why I didn’t pay for the second printer since I didn’t return it. Lucky for me I kept it in the box without opening it. I explained what happened and I was sure they didn’t believe me, but they gave me a prepaid label and I returned the printer. One of the complaints about buying online is some people get addicted to it just as some do to online gambling. They just keep buying things even if they don’t need them, to the point they spend all their money. It is a little harder to do that if you have to go out to stores to do the same thing. CNBC published an article about being addicted to online shopping. They indicated there were many compulsive buyers out there. The article cited the fact psychologists and even financial experts had seen more patients and clients struggling with this habit. One expert said it was worse among millennial and GenX. We may shop a lot on Amazon but many of us also shop on other sites. I remember seeing something I wanted on a site I never went to before. As I checked what I wanted to buy I then had to fill out the usual form with name, address and other information. When it got to the credit card information it wouldn’t let me fill in the field for the credit card number so I tried again. After three times I had to give up because the link for customer service also was not working. Sometimes the information on a product is not that clear. You might need measurements if it is an appliance you want to be able to fit somewhere. Sometimes you can’t find them listed and even worse they are not precise. An example of this was a gas stove top I purchased which was listed as a certain size but when I got it, it was ½ inch wider than stated and didn’t fit. If I would have got it at a store, I would have measured it myself. Sometimes the sizes on clothes are off. You might be a certain size and yet that size from a retailer doesn’t fit when it comes forcing you to have to mail the thing back. In that case it might have been easier just to buy it in a store. I had a sneaker problem once. I always wear the same size in a sneaker so I went online to a sneaker outlet and ordered a pair. When I got them, although they were both marked with the same size one sneaker was clearly much smaller than the other. It turned out the outlet was selling seconds. These are items which have problems so they are not sold by stores unless marked as seconds. I did receive a refund within a week of returning them, but that is not the point. No reputable store would have sold sneakers that way and it was a pain to have to go to the post office and then wait for the refund after they were received. One of the big problems I find when contacting companies to get something fixed is twofold. The first part has to do with the long waits to get to speak to someone. The second problem is when I do get to talk to someone but then they can’t understand me and I can’t understand them. This happens quite often in these situations. There is also a problem which happens that some people have complained about. They say when they look at the photo of something for sale it looks nice but when the actual item arrives it is of poor quality and sometimes takes a long period of time to get because it is being mailed from somewhere in Asia. I would also like to talk about price. We don’t always get the best price when shopping online unless we diligently search other sites for the same item or have a shopping app which compares prices. There are also coupon sites but these are not always accepted by some vendors. While shopping online is convenient, it can also be a pain.
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