What is safe to buy while shopping in bed. Importance of human interaction in the age of terrible shopping decisions.
My boyfriend’s mother is an avid traveler. She spent over 5 years traveling around the globe and working abroad. Recently, however, she settled down in her hometown. But you know what they say — once a traveler, always a traveler as the spirit remains restless.
You may be wondering what’s with this storytelling about my boyfriend’s mother — trust me, it is important.
The right gift
Christmas was coming up and me and my boyfriend wanted to choose just the right gift for her. You can relate, I am sure as you too tried to find that very sentimental, funny or particularly beautiful gift to show appreciation for a special person in your life.
Well, there we were, shopping for gift while in bed, winding down for the night. That’s when I found an e-shop with fantastically beautiful maps of the world. Gorgeous, stylized designs. Excited and amazed, we chose one.
Completing the purchase was easy: shopping cart; terms and conditions with all those legal closes nobody reads. Payment options; e-mail; name; delivery details.
Place your order. Click Done.
We completed the purchase and drifted off to sleep with a happy smile on my face. We were looking forward to giving her that piece of art of a map. we were sure she would love it.
Two days later we receive a smallish envelope. Not a box, not a tube. What’s going on? We open it to discover inside that amazing map… sized 4 x 4 inches! Like a postcard.
I am sure that we are not the only ones who ever fell victim of shopping-in-bed convenience, buying something out of boredom or making an otherwise erroneous purchase.
We thought that buying a picture (piece of art) was a safe option. It was not. It definitely was not the seller’s fault. The online representation of the product was really great — design graphics, quality of paper description. The size was also stated there. Just not very prominently. Thus, we did not take notice, and since we were tired and half asleep, we just presumed the map was, well, standard map size (whatever that size may be).
See, if we were shopping in a store, we would definitely notice the size, and would make a different decision. Now, stuck with a choice “to keep or not to keep”, we thought of the one convenience that is even greater than the convenience of shopping from home. I am talking about the convenience of being able to summon the help of a sales associate, and not only for a purchase consultation but for a return process we were now facing: printing the return label (quite a task if your printer is on a fritz), going to the post office to stand in that long Christmas season line… Having a live person to deal with would be so much easier, and we would also get our money back much sooner. Instantly, really.
The whole new experience of shopping from your sofa
Avoiding mistakes much like the one I made is easy. There are three solutions:
- Don’t shop online;
- Shop online carefully double and triple checking your order to protect yourself from the hassles that may follow;
- Employ the help of real people behind the scenes.
There are tools to help you do that. There is usually a customer service phone number or email address provided. We are not going to suggest chat because that, in most cases, means you’ll be talking to a machine who may or may not be pre-programmed to answer your question. Emails take a lot of time, so the notion of an impulse purchase and excitement associated with it goes right out the window.
A phone call is a better option unless it’s outsourced to some entity that can’t provide help beyond the script on their monitor.
Being able to communicate with a real person who is, indeed, part of the establishment you’re shopping online is your path to a more pleasurable and secure online shopping experience. You can summon their advise and fill them in on on the details of your decision-making.
If you want to make sure you are talking to a real person at the very store you’re shopping online, try OKTIUM — an instant live video connection for online shoppers straight to available salespeople and service providers at brick-and-mortar locations. That’s how you see the product of your interest live, that’s how you get your questions answered by someone who really has all the answers. That’s how you avoid making annoying mistakes while shopping in bed. Oh, and don’t worry, even though it’s a video connection, it gives you a choice to be seen… or not. So you can still wear your jammies.
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