Friday, July 11, 2008

Amazon, eat my shipping!

OK, I’m very online-oriented. I love the web, and all things webby, and this is so very true of me as to be mentioned in business meetings! Here at work! In admiring tones! I answer questions and register for things and chat and research things all using my very, very good friend the Internets.

But I don’t so much buy things online.

This is NOT because I’m afraid someone will steal my credit card info or my identity or anything else, because I’m way too sure that nobody cares about me enough to take the time. (remember, I’m the super-genius that used the exact same username and password for practically every website I accessed for something like a decade. Security is apparently for the shiny and rich people, not me!) The main three reasons that I don’t buy things so much online are these:

1. Shipping
2. Stupid, stupid shipping
3. You want HOW MUCH for the shipping?

For this reason I’ve often been a big fan of Amazon.com, the online super-shopping-center-of-everythingness. Because you could get so many things there, and combine the shipping or sometimes not even pay shipping because you got SO MUCH STUFF! This for me was the perfect solution for buying things online.

Well not anymore! Now there are SO many other companies who ply their wares through Amazon, but send from their own wee warehouse somewhere in east Asswipe Nowhere, and so you can find the 6 things that you want to get, but because they’re all coming from different companies/places/zipcodes the shipping will be 50% of the cost! Thereby eliminating the entire benefit of the online purchase, which IS: lower cost!

Yesterday I spent over an hour trying to consolidate the various things I was purchasing so that the shipping wouldn’t exceed the total cost of the items. “Gosh, if I get all of these kinds of things from one place then it would be better, except that this place has absurd shipping costs (we charge you two bucks per shipment, and also six bucks per item, even if the item only costs three bucks and if it actually weighs 2 oz. and could be mailed to you on the head of a danged pin!, so if you buy something for $3 your total will be $11, but if you buy two things for $3 your total will be $20, and if you buy three things for $3 there will also be the “rule of threes” shipping charge, which fluctuates depending on the phases of the moon, so your total will be somewhere between $35 and two cars plus a baby monkey…) so maybe I’ll try to buy them all from this other place, except that this other place only carries two of these three things, and then this place carries all three but for super-high prices. Or maybe I’ll just give my aunt socks and be done with it!”
Dear my beloved aunt: I was going to get you excellent camera things that
will be fun and cool for you, and which you would have used a bunch. But
because nobody could sell me these cool things without making me scream from the
stupid-high shipping and also because I freaked out at Amazon and they e-asked
me to e-leave and never e-turn, instead you are getting these super-useful tube
socks, size 16. Enjoy.

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