Online shopping – buyers beware…

Since starting this site, I realized that I’ve actually been doing quite a fair bit of online shopping thanks (or rather no thanks! LOL...) to the influence of other bloggers as well as the lemmings I get from reading their sites.

However, one thing to be said about online shopping is that it’s different from what you would get from a physical shop. With brick-n-mortar shops, you’re free to browse through the merchandise at your own leisure and only ask questions if you need to. Online however, you’re at the mercy of the customer service representatives to give you the information you need to make a purchase. But what happens when things go wrong afterwards?

Simple enough with physical shops – you can simply take it back to exchange (that is, if you were not at fault) and if need be, make a complaint to the management. With sites like eBay and forums, the sellers usually have ratings to vouch for their credibility so you’re more or less reassured on that part.

With online shops though, that’s where the standard of service really shows, good OR bad since you’re at the mercy of the owner’s discretion. You might want to check out Kahani’s post on her bad experience with Lush Serendipity. As much as I like the name, I cannot condone this kind of “customer service” (if it can even be called that) and it’s a shame since blogshops like this give the rest of the decent traders a bad name.

Having had both good encounters (Meow Cosmetics and StrawberryNET) and bad encounters (Cherry Culture) shopping online, suffice to say I’m more cautious about who I buy from online. After all, who wants to waster their hard-earned money, and get shoddy customer service to boot? You wouldn’t take it from physical shops, so why settle for bad treatment online?