Friday, July 28, 2017

 The "online shopping" coup d'etat continues ...
Have you ...
*Eaten out at a nice restaurant lately?
*Enjoyed a day at a posh shopping center---watching a movie, then afterwards grabbing a bite at one of the eateries on the premises, or having ice cream before heading into one of the bookstores or clothing shops?

Hopefully you're savoring these sensuous experiences as they're soon to become an anachronism as the popularity of online shopping continues to take over and envelop the whole shopping experience.

Which, for most of you, is no problem as you already do just about everything on/with your smartphone outside of eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, bathing, grooming and sleeping.
And you're most likely already ordering crap online to boot.

So this transition will not hurt you in any way.
However, there are those of us who do not have a smartphone and, in fact, cannot afford one ...nor the services and extras required to activate the functions and operations of one.

And, even if we did own a smartphone, we still wouldn't be comfortable with putting our account numbers online with the chronic breach of security issues so prevalent and seemingly insoluble.

And for people like us it's imperative the traditional physical stores, businesses, offices and shopping areas remain intact and continue as coexisting with the newfangled methods of commerce and material acquisitions.

Another factor:  When ordering either online, by phone, or by mail, one's burdened with having to be present upon delivery of said item, whether due to living in a secure residential building where residents and management need a key to the building just to even enter, or (in the case of those who live in houses) to prevent delivered items from being stolen from the porch or front walk by devious passer-bys.
And major companies and providers---like UPS, FedEx, the cable/satellite providers, the phone company---are not exactly known for their transparency or punctuality, or even for being able to establish any kind of timeline for making their deliveries.

Yet another factor:  Once online (and cashless) become bonafide "in vogue" there'll probably be a "minimum purchase" clause, wherein one cannot simply purchase a couple choice wanted/needed items.  They'll be forced to have to make a minimum $50 purchase per order.  Every transaction will be that of a "volume" nature.
They've already been doing this sort of thing in the REAL stores.  Selling "packages of 10" when you only need one or two of said items, but individual ones are no longer available for sale like in decades past.  Smaller items come in boxes of 50, or bags of 100, and the like.

In other words---online shopping is but a further erosion of our freedom-of-choice.

No comments:

Post a Comment