Most women want to hear two special words from the person they love, expressing their deepest emotions towards them. The desire to hear the gentle and kind phrase, “shopping spree!”,as a signification of their partner’s compassion and understanding of the woman’s need for retail therapy, is what we live for. But, in this day and age this simple concept has been made extremely complicated! I for one love to shop, I would shop in the morning at night midday and even in my sleep if I could. The invention of the seemingly clever interface that would somehow simplify the shopping experience is in fact a generic simulation of the real thing. My most recent internet shopping escapade end in disaster; I’ll be honesty and start off by stating I am not in any way technology savvy. As a result I am not caught up with the latest phone. So I began my search online at t-mobile.com in my attempt to purchase a new phone I experience a stressful shopping ordeal instead of the retail therapy that I needed. First the aggregation of searching through hundreds of phones and looking at the computer scene for hours but that’s not the worst part. Once I placed the order putting down my account information, I was required to sign an electronic pin signature. This would confirm my purchase although they had already taken the money out of my account. Of course my electronic signature did not go through, the order was cancelled and if I wanted redo the order I would have had to wait two week to do so. Which sounded like a lot of fun but I really was not up to going through the whole process again. But the best part is yet,I had to wait a month for t-mobile to electronically refund my money. Something as simple as my signature became an annoying month long run around of me trying to get my money back. This all could have been avoided if I would have just gone to the t-mobile store and purchase the phone in person. I remember when internet shopping began to flourish, sites like: eBay, Amazon and Overstock were said to have everything a shopper could want. Despite the convenience of never having to leave your home, internet shopping sucks! It is such a hassle; you could start to hurt your eyes from looking at the screen for an hour or more, you never know if your account information is truly safe, and you are always at risk of receiving the wrong item or getting your shipment late! Not my idea of a fulfilling day of shopping I must say. But I guess with anything there are pros and cons, even for internet shopping they are as follows:
Pros:
1) The luxury of never having to leave your home
2) Variety is more diverse since the market is global and not local
3) Items are more generally lower priced due to the high percentage of auctions and discount sites
4) The stores are never closed
5) Products can be found that are not available locally
Cons:
1) Items ordered online are often on backorder but the consumer may not be informed until weeks after they make the purchase.
2) Shipping costs
3) False advertising, the person selling the item could hide it up just to sale it but in actuality its everything but it description
4) Refunds may not always be accessible
5) The risk of identity thrift
There are indeed some considerable pros to shopping online, but I stand on the fact there is nothing like being in the actual store. For me, shopping online gets to be overwhelming, there is no one to seek counsel from when you’re confused. There is also the fact that you are completely left at the mercies of the World-wide web. There is more to shopping than what meets the eye. It holds a certain nostalgic essence, a tangible guarantee that cannot be easily replaced by a computer screen filled with over stock items.
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