Tag Archives: shopping

It’s That Time Again

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Halloween is over. Yes, the calendar called it Monday night (or Tuesday morning, if you prefer).

And that means it’s time to turn our attention to the next major shopping eventholiday. No, not Thanksgiving. Many retailers have announced they’ll be closed on Thanksgiving again this year–and huzzah for that small bit of sanity. No, I’m talking about [insert ominous chord here] Black Friday.

More intriguing than the Turkey Day closings are the announced opening times for Black Friday. So far, per blackfriday.com, very few national retailers are planning to open in the middle of the night. The most common opening time so far looks to be 6:00; Big Lots, Home Depot, and Jo-Ann are among those who’ve picked that time. Nearly as many stores are going with “regular hours”: Walgreens, Marshalls, and Half Price Books, for example. Only one major retailer–JCPenney–has announced an earlier opening, and that’s 5:00.

Granted, there are still plenty of announcements to be made (or non-announcements to be leaked). But so far, at least, it’s looking like significant numbers of retail employees will get to spend Turkey Thursday with their families, and still get a good night’s sleep before reporting for work Friday.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that, according to RetailMeNot, more than half the U.S. population is looking forward to observing Black Friday in the traditional in-store fashion. That said, however, the self-evidently biased survey doesn’t say anything about whether the public is clamoring for middle-of-the-night openings. That doesn’t have to be part of the equation, right?

I say not. I’ve got no problem with deeply discounted loss leaders to drag spenders into stores. No issues with people paying more than they can afford when they miss out on the doorbusters–after all, they can always return the goods the next day for a refund; retailers expect that and budget for it. And I’m already on record as being willing to allow monthlong sales.

But the quid pro quo here has to be an end to making employees arrive at work at dark o’clock and forcing them to wade through crowds of would-be shoppers who’ve been lined up since even darker o’clock.

If a few weirdos want to line up at midnight, let ’em. But don’t open the doors until your regular Friday opening time. Let everyone else sleep in. Remember: a happy, well-rested customer is one who doesn’t block the registers while they fumble around writing a check, screaming at a clerk because they couldn’t find the gizmo they wanted, or* corralling the store manager to complain about “that kind” being allowed to shop in the same store as “decent people”**.

* Or, goddess and gods help us all, “and”, not “or”.

** Based on current headlines, I figure it’s inevitable we’ll get at least one mass shooting at a store predominantly patronized by non-whites and/or non-Christians.

Let’s not aid and abet. Sleeping later won’t change anyone’s mind about their fellow Americans, but it might just help them suppress the impulse to “do something about them“.

Not the Whole Reason

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So, not the only reason Amazon is conquering the world, but a big part of it is that they make it easy to order.

A couple of counter-examples.

I recently placed an order with Retailer A (name concealed because it’s irrelevant). There were four items in my order, three of Item 1 and one Item 2. Here’s what I had to do after I added the items to my cart:

  1. Click the cart.
  2. Click to confirm the items were correct. All items were set to in-store pickup.
  3. Click again to switch Item 2 from in-store pickup to shipping.
  4. One of the Item 1 had changed from In-Store to “How do want to get this item?” It took three clicks to set it back to In-Store. And doing that changed Item 2 from shipping back to in-store, one more click to reset it.
  5. Click to confirm the order.
  6. The confirmation page reloaded with a message informing me that some of the delivery dates had changed. Click yet again to confirm the order with the changed dates.
  7. Click to confirm my payment information.
  8. Click again because one of the Item 1 had changed delivery dates back to the original date.
  9. Which, naturally meant I had to reconfirm my payment information.
  10. One final (amazingly!) click to confirm my address for the item being shipped.

Later the same day, I placed an order from Retailer B. Because I’ve shopped with this retailer before, I know I need to buy $35 worth of merchandise to get free shipping. No problem: I need a bunch of the same small item, so I’ll get enough of them to total $35. I go to the product page. There’s no ability to put more than one in the cart, so I add one.

  1. Click the cart.
  2. Change the order quantity to ten.
  3. Realized the price had dropped since I last bought this thing, and ten of them was still a bit under $35.
  4. Tried to change to a dozen. Discovered the system wouldn’t let me order more than ten. This was not documented anywhere.
  5. Returned to the product page and tried to add it to the cart again. Only at that point did I get a pop-up informing me I already had the maximum number of the item per order in my cart.
  6. Gave up, ordered one of something I didn’t need but can use because it was still cheaper to get that with free shipping than to pay for shipping.
  7. One click to confirm my address.
  8. Another click to confirm my payment information.

To be clear, these are not little Mom and Pop outfits; they’re both chains with national footprints and extensive experience in online sales.

Now, let’s contrast the experience with shopping on Amazon.

If there’s an item limit, Amazon tells you so on the product page right below the price.

The delivery date never changes during checkout. If there’s a change–to an earlier or later date–they tell you after the order has been placed and give you an opportunity to change or cancel the order.

Different items can have different shipping options and changing one never affects the others.

So even if you leave the one-click order process out of the discussion, it always goes like this:

  1. Click the cart.
  2. Click to confirm the address.
  3. Click to confirm the payment info.
  4. Click to confirm the shipping info.

Why would anybody shop anywhere but Amazon? In my case, the only reason I used Retailers A and B was because they had merchandise I wanted that Amazon didn’t. If I’d been able to get it from Amazon, I’d probably have given up at Step 5 in both cases. Given the way Amazon aggressively expands, “we have something they don’t” is never more than a temporary advantage.

And, really, who needs the hassle?

Nobody is going to compete with Amazon on price. You need to bring something to the party that Amazon doesn’t.

Something that customers want.

Nobody wants to be annoyed.