The perils of online shopping

Even though I served some time working retail and my credit card balances would say differently, I’m not a big fan of shopping malls. Or actually, my time in retail probably cured me of liking shopping malls, but unfortunately for my financial situation, that hatred didn’t occur until I had plunked myself in debt.

But you can ask my mom or my dad, I’ve never been a big fan of crowds. In fact, going to events like the State Fair will inevitably lead to a little bit of panicky sweating on my part and if it gets really bad, I will usually ditch the crowds and get a breath of air outside instead of trying to keep on my game face.

So it shouldn’t surprise any of you that I was happy to skip the crowds on Black Friday and go to work instead of trying to navigate my way through deal-crazed people to score a $15 DVD player. But I was not entirely shop-free on Friday – for some odd reason, I suddenly figured out a gift that I wanted to give to one of my relatives and since I was already chained to my desk, I went to my bookmark for Amazon.com and found the gift that I was looking for. But then I found the same item cheaper at another store. And look at that, if I would spend $15 more, I’d get free shipping on the deal.

And there you have it – the perils of online shopping. Nobody wants to spend $6 or $7 because they are too lazy to go to the mall and now it seems that all online outlets have the oh-so-helpful message that tells you “if you spend this much more you’ll get free shipping on your items!” Tricksy online retailers!

My buddy Raul confirmed my theorem over lunch on Wednesday when I told him about my latest shopping adventure. I was getting a gift for one of my buddies at the Sephora.com website and as I clicked on the gift that I wanted a message appeared at the top of my screen telling me if I spent $32 more, I could have free shipping. And I admit, I clicked through a couple other places on the site to see if there was anything else that I could buy for my loved ones.

“So yeah,” I told Raul. “I ended up spending the $6 for shipping, but I look at it as I’ve saved $32 by resisting temptation.”

When it comes to ordinary day-to-day things, I visit my local retailers. But these days, if I buy books, CDs or movies, I usually find myself heading online to find the best deals. But how great are these “deals” when you pay $9 for a DVD online, cough up the extra $5 in shipping and that same DVD was only $13.99 at Target? At the end of the day, shopping online seems like a wash to me. Or, what happens to me and Raul, we find that $9 DVD and instead of just shilling out the extra for shipping, we find something else to buy so we hit the minimum to get free shipping. Take Amazon (and yes, I’m picking on you a lot, Amazon, but you do get plenty of my money) – spend $9 on a DVD, free shipping is just $16 away and that could be a CD or maybe two. All to hit $25 so you avoid spending $5 or $6 on shipping. $25 dollars spent versus $14 dollars. It’s only $9 dollars more, but that’s how much the DVD was you intended to buy in the first place.

Sorry – that’s probably an extraordinarily long-winded diatribe about something a lot of people already know, but I was very proud of myself the other day when I said NO to the $32 temptation.

Maybe that makes up for Thursday’s Latte Factor:

$15.52 – I owed Raul lunch and we needed to discuss the meaning of life over overpriced plates of pasta.
$2.09 – I ate a scone after lunch because I was in need of white chocolate raspberry pastry loving.
$15.00 – Gasoline for the Rattling Death Trap
$38.77 – Groceries. Some were for good – like making food for a friend who recently had a baby. Some of it, very bad – like the ice cream that I bought because Thursday was a very, very, very icky day.

Total: $71.38