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This entry was posted by on Friday, 2 December, 2011 at

Black Friday was last week. I have heard the stories and always wonder why anyone bothers to leave their house that day. I am told it is because of “the deals!” I was actually working for most of the day, but I did come home for a couple of hours and checked out some of these “deals” online.

As I may have mentioned, I have been wanting to get into buying guitars as an investment, but as yet have been reluctant to pull the trigger on anything. There is a certain series of limited editions by a well known manufacturer out now that have caught my eye, and as I had hoped, the guitar megastore was having a Black Friday 15% off sale. So I actually had a guitar picked out, added to my online shopping basket and credit card in hand… but when I entered the promo code, the price did not actually change. I then checked the restrictions on the offer and found that “Some manufacturers have chosen not to participate in this promotion,” and there was a list that appeared to include every brand of which I had ever heard. This is why I hate that store. Screw those guys.

Now you may be thinking that my mistake was in trying to shop online on Black Friday, when any savvy shopper knows I wanted “Cyber Monday.” I do not know where this Cyber Monday thing came from, that sounds to me like a total fabrication by online retailers. But in any event, I did check back on Monday, and again there was a deal (I do not recall if it was the same 15% or not) and again it featured the no-brands-you-know restriction. Of course there are lots of other places to buy guitars online, yet none of the others felt the need to even waste my time with phoney promotions. (Which may reflect well on their potential for my future business, were it not for what I am about to tell you.)

 

On another note, earlier this week this week, I also had a revelation. There has something that has not made sense to me for quite awhile now. Given what we know about timoth:

1) He hates leaving the house
2) He hates spending money
3) He loves the internet

If he is going to buy something, how does timoth feel about online shipping?

I would have made this a question if I ever made a second quiz, but I will just tell you: I hate online shopping. Absolute last resort. Most of the time, if something is not available locally, then I would rather not have it at all. Or else I tell myself that I will order it “later” and then never do, which is more or less the same thing.

Of course, I have ordered things online in the past, just not recently. In fact, I can not actually remember the last time I did. So perhaps this hatred has intensified over time. And it does not make sense to me. I have tried to rationalize that I just feel more comfortable having the product in hand before I pay for it, which makes a certain amount of sense, except when you consider that I use a credit card for most things and therefore I am technically not yet paying for it at the time of the transaction, but that is getting a bit abstract.

For some reason, perhaps I heard something on the radio about supporting small business, I was thinking about how much I prefer local business as a concept, but that behaviorally, I prefer the anonymity of big box stores. Most people seem to like personal customer service, but it freaks me out if I walk in a store and someone asks if they can help me. (But that is just me, you guys that do not have crippling social anxiety should definitely support local businesses.) So anyway I was wondering (again, still, furthermore), if that is the case, then why do I not embrace the even greater anonymity of shopping online?

I do look at online stores quite often, and I probably check that online auction site at least a couple of times a week. I just never buy anything. Yet, I pay my bills online, I bank online, I even buy things like plane tickets and charitable gifts online, so it is not that I do not trust the security of online transactions or anything like that. I simply will not buy anything that needs to be shipped to my house.

That is where it dawned on me: for whatever reason, it seems that I do not trust shipping companies at all.

I admit that it is totally irrational. I do not know where it even comes from, as I can not think of any problem I have had in the past in that regard, but there it is.

Now, at some point you must have been wondering how I can talk so much about never shopping online when I started the post by talking about very nearly buying a guitar online… Yet, I left out a key detail. I was going to buy it online, but then pick it up at the store myself. Of course, one could point out that it would still have to be shipped to the store, but then everything in the store had to have been shipped to the store and really that is on them and not my problem if something gets damaged, but then do I really trust those charlatans to inspect and NOT hand over a damaged product… I most certainly do not.

Anyway, I did not actually buy it, now did I?


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