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12 Christmas Gifts Not To Buy Online
nsingapu writes "While online shopping is booming this Christmas, niche products like "two turtle doves" purchased on the Internet are becoming increasingly more expensive then their non e-tailed counterparts. PNC bank has updated their annual tongue-in-cheek economic analysis, based on the cost of goods and services purchased by the True Love in the holiday classic, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." The analysis compares the cost of traditional goods against their cost thoughout the past 20 years and against the price when purchased online. PNC concludes that most items are more expensive to buy over the Internet, primarily due to the cost of shipping, and that the abundance of cheaper labor in countries such as India and China has resulted in pressure on U.S. manufacturers to outsource."
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"most items are more expensive to buy over the Internet, primarily due to the cost of shipping"
:)
Most items are, however if you're willing to try smaller stores (reviewed by Reseller Ratings, Epinion or another neutral place) several are offering free shipping so you save on both shipping and sales tax (if applicable in your area). Not to mention several of the smaller stores allow promotional coupons which are usually only for first-time customers but since when do us geeks show loyalty?
Then again, some do have spam;del;del;del;del;mailing lists to receive more coupons codes for future purchases.
Over the years the broadest swings have been in the swans which apparently are somewhat difficult to breed. Some years there are huge shortages other years gluts in availability. Excluding the swans from the core index allows for a more stable and truthful economic indicator that is not tied to supply-demand related swings in swan pricing.
I live in New Jersey. I ordered four books from Protoporia a Greek online bookstore. The four books I ordered only cost a total of 26.24 Euros, which compared to the price of books in America is decent. One of the books Thanos Vlekas(in Greek) only cost me an amazingly low price of 2.81 Euros, while the English translation of the same title cost $17.95 at Amazon. The problem is that shipping from Greece cost me 17.20 Euros and took 10 days. There is no alternative for Greek books though, there is no real Greek bookstore in the entire United States. Some stores in Astoria have a few Greek books but they are not bookstores, and it costs over $12 dollars alone to pay for tolls to drive there. All in all in this case though the shipping price is very high, there is no alternative, even driving to New York for books because of tolls would cost almost as much, something to keep in mind about online shipping, even driving out of your area can cost alot with tolls, gas, etc.
Your point about the value of time (and implicitly, not dealing with Christmas shoppers up close and personal) is great.
But in fairness, AAA's cost estimation used annual depreciation and insurance rates -- two things that aren't really "marginal" in cost.
If you own a car, whether or not you take that one trip to the local strip mall, your depreciation and insurance costs won't change. Therefore, the marginal cost isn't 56 cents a mile, it's far lower. Petrol, actual wear and tear, oil and air filters, fluids, etc must be accounted for. Even the probability of an accident and it's accompanying costs should be considered.
Depreciation? No way. Insurance? Nope. You were going to pay those costs if you bought that TV at Fry's or at priceline.com .
Support a few technologists in Washington.