Monday, January 24, 2011

Me On: Online Shopping

It is 2011. Check the calendars, this is actually correct. So, why is it that online ordering still causes me to tear my hair out? Do the retailers not know it's 2011.

Online ordering makes life so much easier. I almost never go shopping anymore. I've never actually loved it that much. I don't like crowds, I don't like searching and I always fall victim to marketing when I'm in an actual store. Online shopping allows me to easily find what I'm looking for and have it sent directly to my house. No muss, no fuss. Har har. Usually there's a fuss and I don't get it.

If you are a small retailer, I can understand why you don't have the best website for online ordering. It must be a hassle to set it up and monitor it and I'm sure it's hella expensive. But...Macy's....there's no excuse.

Let me tell you about the worst and best sites for online shopping. Best would have to be Banana Republic. I order from them a lot, I always get a discount because they are always running a promotion online, I can almost always find the sizes that I need, I always get free shipping, the items have never gotten lost, my order has never been screwed up and if I need to return something it's very simple. I can't rave enough about their online store.

Honorable mention goes to Crate and Barrel. I order lots of wedding, Christmas and birthday gifts through Crate and Barrel and never have problems. Second honorable mention to Sephora. Always am ordering through them, never with the problems.

Now, let's skewer the worst. First is Macy's. What the hell is their problem? Macy's is a huge corporation and their online ordering is the shits (to put it mildly). Many times I have been ordering wedding gifts online from them and have closed up shop in the middle of the order because it's so frustrating and I know something will be screwed up. Just today I was ordering a wedding gift through them and their site kept telling me that the order would be delayed because one or more of the items was on backorder and that I needed to click the accept changes button to continue with the order. Only problem was that all of the items said they were in stock and there was no "accept changes" button. I actually had to close out of the website and start over.

Next is ticketmaster and stubhub. I hate how you have to purchase the tickets at warp speed because someone else always seems to buy the tickets you are looking for right when you are looking. Curious. I think it's a scam to get you to pay more. Plus, it's always so difficult to find what you are looking for and often the website doesn't load properly. This is a huge fail!

Next, we'll go with any airline website for the same reason as above. Really, the airlines just increased the prices of the tickets within the last five minutes? Bastards.

Anyone else have horror stories about online shopping?

P.S. For those of you who don't know about ebates...shame on you. I don't plug much, but ebates is often if you online shop a lot. Just don't forget to tell them that I referred you.

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