Why I Prefer to Shop Online
Walking around the city for hours being harassed into purchasing an item of clothing the price of my entire weekly wage by an eccentric sales staff who’s also trying to talk me into buying a matching accessories that my five year old cousin wouldn’t even wear is my idea of a nightmare. I’m the shopper who’ll tell my friend that the first thing she pulls out of the bargain-bin makes her look like the next Miranda Kerr just so that I can get out of a store pumping the new Pink album and racks of fluro clothes that the sight of makes me feel as if I’m are about to slip into an epileptic fit. Yes, I’m that guy. I hate shopping for the blisters and headaches and for the post-shoppers depression felt after you discover flaws that you didn’t know existed until you wandered into the sixth brightly lit change room of the day.
Now this isn’t just when clothes shopping this also applies when shopping for electronics, books, dvd’s and food. Why should one stand in a store for hours listening to the sales assistant breakdown the entire range of the products and competing products. His words go straight over your head as you think about the parking stations price doubling in the next five minute that you stand there. When shopping online you can compare prices in a simple scroll of the mouse and read a dozen customer reviews on the next tab. It’s then delivered straight to your door with the possibility of the delivery guy being a bit of mid-week eye candy.
Another aspect of online shopping, that I believe is a lot more important than just the advantage of not having to make a day of physically going to get the item, is the accessibility of being able to get whatever you want for a fraction of the cost of buying from a retailer. I have found books that haven’t been in print for the last 3 decades and an item of clothing from the Spring of 2006 that I would never be able to find in a physical store with the assurance that I got it for the cheapest possible price.
My biggest weakness is online auction sites. They are different ballgame in the world of online shopping, the thrill of “winning” an item is much like the thrill felt when gambling. The whole process becomes exciting, it’s becomes like a games as you eagerly watch an item for the final three minutes of the listing, your cursor hitting the refresh button in ten second intervals, counting down to that final millisecond to place your bet in hope of just beating the other hopeful bidders. An email flies into your inbox “You are a winner!” you continue through to the check-out and pay almost robotically as you input your paypal password as the final step to your purchase, your account already has the rest of your details so you don’t even have time to think about what you have just purchased. And then you wait, sometimes up to a fortnight, to unwrap the parcel much like a present. Now you can finally hold the item in your hands that was just a 2-D image on your screen a fortnight ago.
Another joy to me is the being able to have something that others wouldn’t have something that I have never seen in a physical store. Like a leading brand vintage sweater bought from the US, the price of the shipment was almost three times as much as I paid for the sweater itself, but I know that I won’t arrive at a party and the person across from me will be wearing the same thing. I’ve also purchased many other various obscurities that have made me think about there is a reason that other people don’t own them. Like whether the beer bottle shaped telephone was worth the two week novelty.
Once during a dinner party a conversation brewed about online shopping, having more experience in such a subject than the people I was in the presence of I quickly exclaimed that I bought everything from ebay. Straight away a close friend of mine stated that “yes, you buy everthing from ebay”. Although an exaggeration, the statement did make me aware that although I do purchase a lot of necessities online and for what I believe with huge savings, I may also be finding myself often unwrapping packages that should have actually stayed stored away on that virtual shelf.
