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Shopping Online
A reader writes:"I've been buying stuff on the Internet for a while, and wanted to get people's thoughts about the best places to go. I primarily am looking for media or computer parts. Of course, I've used Froogle, PriceWatch or PriceGrabber, but also use places like tigerdirect or NewEgg. Where else do people go, and any recommendations for getting decent deals? " Oh, and of course, shamless plug for ThinkGeek, who is also owned by OSTG.
Belive it or not, I'm finding things cheaper, yet with good quality, on eBay. I'm also looking for hard-to-find parts (like 128Meg EDO SDRAM for a Dell CPi D266XT -- They won't take generic!) and finding them on eBay itself. Alot of vendors have fairly good stock of them.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
u know buying online SHOULD be nice and convenient but i find buying stuff online WAY to pricey due to the american exchange rate.. for example ThinkGeek.. or as i would like to call it.. "Overpriced American Geek Store" (no offence to the OSTG) but OVER all i would say:
online shopping == Good
Online Shopping From Canada == Rip off
i could be mistaken.. but so far the only site i'v found with decent canadian prices is Amazon.ca
any suggestions eh?
Newegg is all you need. I've quit shopping around, I go straight to Newegg. You know they'll have what you want within a few dollars of the lowest price around. Together with their fast shipping and great customer service, they can't be beat.
Who knows what their deal with ChiefValue is? I hear it's the same warehouses.
I dunno if you geeks like bicycles as much as me, but I bought mine at Jakz.
Heh, that after rebate crap is actually illegal in my state, and we found a website that was based out of this state offering up computers for "free" after rebate. of course you had to buy so many other things to get the rebate - but a quick letter from the attorney general had free computers delivered to the doors of 15 of my friends.. haha.
Don't Tread on Me
First http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/ (ostg sub-domain), then http://www.tigerdirect.com/indexus.asp?SRCCODE=SLA SHX, then a blatant plug for thinkgeek (a major source of revenue for LNUX). Should slashdot not disclose if they are affiliated in any way with all links? What is the purpose of the pricegrabber.com sub-domain, and the SRCCODE in the tigerdirect link?
While ebuyer offer good prices, (I use them for personal and business purchases) their customer services are an absolute joke.
It is extremely difficult to find their phone number without first using a search engine like google.
Example.
If you absolutely must deal with circuit city, pay cash. I made the mistake of getting their "free" credit card when I bought a computer there. They screwed up my account, and then spent a year harrassing me by phone about it. My go.to/circuitcitysux page is no longer on line, but I one point I had this all fully documented.
I did end up learning a lot about my rights as a consumer.
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As to buying online, consider this option: don't.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
I've bought a couple books from amazon, to encourage the authors, and i still get christmas cards from a politician who i gave a dollar to,
but I've transitioned to a post-scarcity economy.
I have enough stuff. There is cornocopia of free stuff online. If it isn't free online, I can probably do without it. You can augment that with a library card, and by participating in a tool cooperative. Tool coops aren't always called that; yours might call itself a church or a neighborhod association or uncle fred.
If I felt a need for more random stuff, dumpster diving is more fun than golf. Here's a free copy of cory doctorow's latest book about dumpster diving: http://www.craphound.com/someone.
The american assumption that we need more stuff to keep up with the joneses is one reason asia is kicking our asses. Lower overhead.
By not buying online, you can resist impulse buys. I got this computer for $100 + tax from a local computer recycling nonprofit, virtualscavengers. Occasionally I'll get a good cup of coffee downtown, or have a drink at a local club, but that's more about renting space. I'm mostly out of the money economy, because i don't need more stuff, so i don't need a traditional job, which frees up a big block of time to waste on slashdot and suchlike.
My approach is only one strategy, and has some disadvantages too, but you can incorporate it incrementally into your lifestyle. We are moving to a post-scarcity economy, like it or not. Stuff matters, but not like it used to.
This happened to me a little while ago...
I decided to purchase a digi camera and I looked up froogle.com and found this super deal. The camera was supposed to be brand new unopened. So I purchase it and then I get this e-mail telling me to call up and purchase my order. So I call them up and they were like you gotta buy the battery for the camera. I found this a bit strange since the camera is supposed to include a recharger and a battery in the box. So I said no that's ok. He was like how are you going to use the camera without the battery. I said I'll buy it later. Then he says, oh I'll check on the product. Then comes back and says that they don't have the product in stock. I was like ok.
So then I went to a different store and found a camera for a good price. But b4 that I went to read some reviews and this store had bad reviews and seems to do the exact same thing. And apparently there a a bunch of stores that do this.
Post super low prices, then u need to call them up to confirm ur order, and then they try to sell u accessories, and if ur not interested, the tell you that the item is out of stock...
WTH.. can't ppl be straight up and stop wasting my time.. sheesh..
This was where my original purchase was: amphotoworld.com
This was where my next order was gonna be: fotoconnection.com
I am glad that I didn't buy from those scammers...
I ended up buying it from this store Adorama, through Amazon. Now I pretty much buy all my stuff through Amazon. I get free shipping most of the time + they respond to my e-mails very fast + if a package is lost, the re-ship it out in record time.
I have done "internet shopping" for a long time now and would reccommend it to anyone, as long as they are smart about it. I have only once run into an internet merchant that is purposely trying to defraud people, and it isn't even credit card fraud. It's rare and you would have to be damn stupid to try and pull credit card fraud these days. It is so tightly watched and so easy for consumers to fight back against blatent credit card fraud (obtaining a CC number and then charging to it without consent or transfer of goods / services)
The one place that I HAVE run into, and I'm picking on them because they are the ONLY place that has done anything this bad, is http://www.wawadigital.net./ I ordered a Minolta Dimage Z2 from them because they showed the price in their store as and I quote "$188 after $50 mail in rebate". This was a great price because most other stores were doing $219 or $229 after rebate. I decided to give it a shot and ordered the camera. Strangely enough, my final receipt after tax and $15.04 2-day shipping said $203.04. I though hey, maybe they messed up and now after the $50 mail in rebate I'll get a $399 MSRP camera for $153.04. The next day, I was contacted via phone (on a Sunday suprisingly) by a salesman from wawadigital.net to "confirm my order". He double checked my address and order information which I thought was impressive and noble of them to do.
Then he said that the price I paid is after a mail in rebate so he would have to add on the $50.00 to my sale. As soon as I questioned this, charging my credit card a different amount than my receipt, the salesman's demeanor immediatly turned from patient and polite and warm to "I don't have time for this, I'm cancelling your order. " All I had done was question this practice, not say I didn't want the camera. I though about it for a minute and after comparing the price sheet to other retailers, decided that even after adding $50.00 it was still worth it. I called back the number and convinced him that I would go ahead with the order at the higher price if he sent me a proper receipt. He was not patient or nice at this point, cussing at me and giving a very rude version of what I'd call "customer service". After agreeing to not cancel my order he then asked if I wanted to add on any memory cards or - but I cut him off before he could list accessories saying No I don't want anything besides the retail box with the camera and what it comes with from the manufacturer. He had hung up before I could finish that sentance. I figured that my order was still going through.
While waiting for my order to arrive (tuesday or wednesday if he shipped it out on monday) I researched wawadigital.net because that seemed a little fishy. I couldn't find anything about wawadigital.net, they're a yahoo store and there was no feedback about them on yahoo's review system. I looked on their website to see if I could find any better info to cross-reference with. Just an email, mailto:wawadigital@yahoo.com (oops, did I just post that publicly?) and that was it. I checked their domain registration whois information and got a name and address. The name was too generic to bring up anything on google but the address brought up such links as
http://www.complaints.com/directory/2004/november/ 10/24.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff146772.h tm
http://www.shopcartusa.com/wawadigital/Details/Rev iewsOrder_Worst/Page_1/
I read through hundreds of stories explaining situations very similar to mine with all sorts of bait-and-switching going on and started to wonder if they had ever sold a camera in their life. I realized that they had a
I worked for ChimpUSA in Washington state while in College. Most of the people they hired knew NOTHING about computers, and they didn't care. Once I had a new hire for the tech department ask me what the difference between a ISA and PCI card was. As one of the two people in the entire store who understood computers, I was handed every sort of question that couldn't be answered by looking at the box, from the trivial ('Does this computer have some RAMs?') to the unanswerable ('Will this copy of Dragon Natural Speaking work with a cheap microphone and a portugese lisp?').
None of the sales force were given any education about product, and the main focus was to sell waranties, which had markup margins of about 3000%. All the sales people told customers that they weren't commissioned, and although they were paid a close to minuimum wage hourly rate, they recieved (small) bonuses when they sold warranties. The warranties where given marketing droid created osfucating names, like 'Technology Assurance Programs'.
Most of the 'sale items' were really regualr price with a rebate thrown in. Quite a bit of the hardware they carried was utter junk, packard bell, compaq, and taiwan made no-brand crap that didn't work right half the time. The classes they offered at inflated rates were worthless to anyone except Information Highway roadkill.
Their POS/inventory system was horrible, and half the time suff listed in the computer could never be found. (If you ever call to see if they have something in stock, don't believe a clerk if they say it is listed in the computer. Make them grab it and put it aside for you.)
Many times, the 'super deals' they list in their flyers wouldn't be backed up with stock on hand. They would have 3 on hand when they opened the doors on Sunday morning, and by 9:15 they would be sold out. Customers who persisted in demanding the item they had drove out to buy were directed to go put the item on back order. These back orders would languish for months, and typically never get filled.
If you want to do businuess with them, it is safe to buy software from them. They really can't fuck that up, other than not having it in stock.
Personally, I wouldn't trust them with a couple of burnt out matches. The greed, stupidity, and ignorance starts with the lowest floor staff and goes as high as I encountered people. The higher ranked the managers got the more ass-kissing became an art. They only cared about their numbers, PERIOD. Customers were considered an annoyance that they placated to get rid of. I can only imagine the mentality at the corporate level. (Oh, yeah, they are based in Texas. You do the math...)
I may sound bitter about the company, but I don't have any personal axe to grind because I got fired or anything. I worked there for a year or so, saw they were fools and moved on. Shop there at your own risk.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Only one place when you are in the need for Hot Stuff.
I once suggested to ebay that the whole feedack system is broken and useless. I explained why it was logically so, and it's really very simple:
Merchants flatly refuse to provide feedback until it has been left for them. This means they will all hold the threat of a negative feedback over your head indefinitely, even though you lived up to your duties as the buyer. The solution to this was very simple, but I see they never implemented it:
The buyer should not be *capable* of leaving feedback until the seller has done so. If I win the auction, and I pay you without complaint or delay, then I *deserve* a positive feedback for it, because I have lived up to my duties as a buyer. Once I have been so rated, *then* it becomes possible for me to leave feedback on the seller.
Again, the current feedback system is broken and dangerous. One cannot trust it any more than the customer reviews at newegg, and newegg admits this. Have I been screwed at ebay? A couple of times, but for relatively small purchases. I have no negative feedback on my record. How? I simply never left feedback for the seller, because people don't mind so much a negative review or two for a guy who does 10,000 sales. If your record is only 20:2 though, you can bet people will be leery of dealing with you, even though you're the one dealing honestly.