'Tis the season to be jolly angry if shops fail to deliver. CHRIS BARTON has been getting into the spirit of Christmas by window shopping.
It's the bane of the online buyer - delivery delay or, worse still, a no-show. It makes the convenience of the internet disappear into shopper frustration,
anger, sometimes rage.
Take Diana Clement, a Kiwi living in Britain. For two Christmases she has used local sites to buy presents for her family in New Zealand.
It's one of the great advantages of the web. Visit a site on the other side of the world, choose a gift, someone else wraps it for you, puts your personal message on a card and then delivers it. So easy and with no packing and posting hassles.
But the sites let Diana down badly. After she had made her online purchase, the sites said the goods were out of stock, or delivered them late, or in one case didn't deliver at all.
In her experience, Kiwi web shops appear to be way behind their British counterparts in customer service and providing a happy online buying experience.
At dinner in London with a fellow expatriate the other week, Diana said, conversation turned to the difficulty of finding decent videos in Invercargill. Diana suggested www.blackstar.co.uk. This British site ships by airmail to New Zealand for free.
Diana reckons that if someone bought two videos at the same time - one from Blackstar and the other from a New Zealand web retailer - Blackstar would deliver first.
Let's hope she's wrong and New Zealand sites have realised the importance of good customer service - especially when it comes to delivering on time.
But Diana's experience did get us thinking - about using web sites on the other side of the world to deliver Christmas presents to family and friends in Britain and the US.
A quick tour of some overseas sites showed that almost all were acutely aware of the importance of delivery - providing detailed information about when orders should be placed to ensure arrival before Christmas. Quite a few were offering free shipping - no postage or freight charges - too.
If you're not sure of what to expect on a shopping site, look no further than www.amazon.com. When you buy here, information is always very clear about the availability of items and you can also track delivery progress online. Building such functionality into a website is not easy because stock shown on the website has to be linked, usually by barcodes, to actual goods in a warehouse. And to track delivery means recording your order's progress every step of the way. It can be done, but it's complicated - and many New Zealand sites don't have this level of sophistication.
But probably the biggest problem, as with most Christmas shopping, is knowing what to buy. On the web, with a whole world of shops to choose from, the problem gets worse. If, like me, you get overwhelmed with choice, go for the shopping bots.
Short for robots, these are programs that search across the internet for requested information. They can also compare prices and offer gift suggestions.
Some of the better know are bizrate.com, dealtime.com, mySimon.com, eshop.com and storerunner.com. Other bots, such as edgegain.com and ichoose.com, work as downloadable software programs.
A word of warning, though. Take note of where the information is coming from. Bots make money either by receiving a fee after a sale is made or by requiring merchants to pay to be listed on the site. That means sometimes you will be comparing prices offered only by the bot's merchant partners - not everything that is out there.
The bots didn't help me much though - mainly because they increased, rather than limited, my choice by introducing me to fascinating sites I had never heard of.
I was familiar enough with the huge scale of American stores such as walmart.com, toysrus.com, jcpenney.com, hallmark.com, sears.com, bestbuy.com, target.com and Kmart's bluelight.com. I could have spent half a day on each. But nothing really tickled my fancy.
Instead I spent far too much time at www.myfreakyfamily.com among bean bags, lava lamps, butterfly chairs and crazy clocks. In the pets section I was particularly taken with the "Safety Dog Collar" ($US18.95) which not only reflects but also radiates its own light: "Turn on the protected Velcro-closure switch and the collar will flash in bright red, visible up to one mile."
I also liked the "Washy Squashy" ($US9.95) - "magical modelling soap ... for ages 4 to 104."
Window shopping was a problem too. I lingered briefly at www.eluxury.com observing a Jonathan Adler "hand loomed luxury stripe pillow" ($US95) and an Alessi cocktail shaker for the same stupid price.
There was more fantasy shopping at ashford.com, neimanmarcus.com and saksfifthavenue.com. I noted ashford.com was promising free overnight delivery and vowed it would send roses if it failed.
At www.fao.com I found an exclusive Chou Chou doll available as Caucasian or Afro-American for $US35 and an over-the-top "Lady Liberty Barbie" for the extraordinary price of $US199.
It was a similar story on the British sites. I began with some of the shopping portals such as www.zoom.co.uk, shopping.lineone.net or http://uk.shopsmart.com. And wasted a lot of time browsing department stores such as www.marksandspencer.co.uk, www.debenhams.co.uk, www.harrods.co.uk, www.johnlewis.co.uk and www.houseoffraser.co.uk.
Diana Clement helped me focus, suggesting www.kaysnet.com - " its fulfilment is excellent. It also has a 20 per cent discount for first-time buyers" - and http://shoppersuniverse.com.
She says Lush is the in thing at the moment for toiletries and if you're after Clarins, Clinique and other make-up and beauty products try www.vitago.co.uk.
She hasn't shopped here herself but says people keep raving about www.firebox.com as the place for toys for the boys or, as the site puts it, "where men buy stuff."
I had to look at the "Orgasmatron" (£16.95) - "not at all what it sounds like" but a rather bizarre looking scalp massager.
Apparently "the effect is tremendous - it sets off waves of the deeply pleasant shivering sensation you get when someone walks over your grave." Indeed.
Have I bought anything yet? No. Still just looking, thanks.
Links:
www.blackstar.co.uk
www.amazon.com
www.myfreakyfamily.com
www.eluxury.com
www.fao.com
www.zoom.co.uk
http://shopping.lineone.net
http://uk.shopsmart.com
www.marksandspencer.co.uk
www.debenhams.co.uk
www.harrods.co.uk
www.johnlewis.co.uk
www.houseoffraser.co.uk
www.kaysnet.com
shoppersuniverse.com
Lush
www.vitago.co.uk
www.firebox.com
Skirting slipshod shops
'Tis the season to be jolly angry if shops fail to deliver. CHRIS BARTON has been getting into the spirit of Christmas by window shopping.
It's the bane of the online buyer - delivery delay or, worse still, a no-show. It makes the convenience of the internet disappear into shopper frustration,
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