For several years now we've been shopping online, but this year, along with a real growth in the online retail industry, there seems to have been an increase in the number of retail sites that either work really badly or simply fail to work at all. I've just been trying to use www.puzzler.com, and apart from being a tram-smash of a design and nasty sneaky people who make the default subscription option a direct debit, the page where you actually put in addresses etc simply doesn't work.
And there's a kicker.
You have to give them your email address before you can go through to the address form, meaning they have it on record, but you don't have a password (because that's not been set up) so when you try to buy again on a different platform you can't get past their login. Now I have an email address I give to the retailers only, and it gets spammed by them 6 ways from Sunday, but I REFUSE to give a decent, working email address.
Wonder how I'm going to unpick this one?
Suddenly, going shopping in really shops seems a really attractive idea.
I haven't had any trouble with online shopping, but then my experience is limited mostly to well-established online bookstores, Amazon, and eBay. What I'm finding with online shopping is that I'm much more inclined to buy things when they are at my fingertips. It takes more effort to resist the impulse "add to cart" and "proceed to checkout" then to think of something I'd possibly like to purchase and then waiting until I get a chance to go to a shop and then by the time I get that chance I may have decided against the purchase.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, I find myself doing a lot more window shopping and thinking about what I want when now that it's simply a matter of going online. I don't think it's healthy.