How often do you buy things online?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I marked “Daily” because I’m averaging it out. I don’t drive, so most of the things I used to get at WalMart or the like, I get on Amazon. Trying to minimize errands on the weekends with husband and toddlers. Pay all bills online that I can. We’re big Kindle and Amazon Prime video users, so…daily is close. Oh, and we even do quite a bit of clothes shopping online because our mall is nearly dead. I haven’t gone Christmas shopping in a brick and mortar way for at least 5 years. :slight_smile: We do get antique-type things locally (sometimes) and I can’t get too many groceries online, but we do use igourmet.com for cheeses and such sometimes, and spices online when I have a bunch to replenish at once. Plus the occasional foreign item.

ETA: When I lived near St Louis, I did order groceries from Schnucks online about once per month, and they delivered. I miss that!

22

Monthly and that is usually eBay or one of my ammunition sources. I don’t care for online much or big box stores for that matter; I still prefer the basic neighborhood place even if I have to travel a bit to get to one.

23

I selected monthly because I was thinking of the Amazon Prime shopping that I had to pull myself away from, but then I realized, I order my lunch at work online everyday.

Does the Starbucks App count too? I do that just about every weekday as well.

Audible orders about every three weeks,

I think that’s about it.

24

Probably a couple of times a month, mostly Amazon. I put “monthly.”

25

More often than weekly. As others have said, Amazon Prime is a lovely thing. I buy almost everything for the house online, other than groceries. And I purchase all of my office supplies online. Not having to haul cases of printer and copier paper up to my second floor office is a godsend. UPS or FedEx does it for me, and the price of the paper, along with nearly everything else, is less than the local brick and mortar stores.

26

I iive in the back end of nowhere and the only place to get anything is online. Free shipping and they bring it to your door? Why shop any other way?

27

I voted ‘monthly’ but it’s generally somewhere between weekly and monthly. Books are stupid expensive in Australia and I can usually get them cheaper online (free postage) provided I’m prepared to wait.

I buy cosmetics online for the same reason. Not clothes, though. I’ve been burned too many times with stuff that didn’t fit properly and cost too much to return.

28

I selected *Monthly *for actual purchases of physical items, mostly from Amazon.ca. I pay my bills online every week and have a few subscriptions for media, such as Audible.fr and Netflix, that could bring the needle closer to Weekly.

29

With Amazon Prime and my kindle, very close to daily so I answered weekly.

More and more if I go to a store to purchase something I’m at some point hit with the realization that I should have just bought it online.

30

I find it stunning that so far, the number of people so said “daily” is greater than those who said less than monthly. I’m assuming most of the “daily” responders are paying online for a service that they use daily, like Netflix or anti-virus protection or membership in SDMB. Surely, the delivery truck is not arriving at their house daily with purchased products?

31

Kindle purchases are delivered electronically.

32

I said occasionally, but that’s because “rarely” wasn’t an answer.

I don’t buy things very often, and when I do I prefer to go to a physical store to do it. I get that “cooped up” feeling really easily, so any excuse I have to get out, I take it.

33

The last time we went shopping at the outlet mall, Store A had a shirt that I absolutely loved, but they didn’t have my size. Suck! We left that store and went to Store B, and while watching my wife try on shoes, I pulled out my phone, went to the Store A website and bought the shirt in my size. It took thirty seconds. My immediate thought was, “I just spent forty-five minutes driving to come here and do this.”

34

I buy a number of things on line, but not with any regularity. I may go months without even shopping, then place several orders in a day - it just depends. This past weekend, I ordered a couple of pairs of Skechers that were on sale - I’d been poking around because my current pair is falling apart, and the timing was right. They’ll arrive in a couple of days - yay! :smiley:

I’ve bought things on line and picked them up locally to avoid delivery charges - I work within a couple of miles of a major shopping area and the slight detour on the way home far outweighs the to-the-door delivery fee. We happen to live in a very safe area where UPS and FEDEX can leave things on our porch without worries. I had a TV delivered in a well-marked box and it was sitting on the porch when I got home - yeah, safe for sure.

I voted Occasionally.

35

And for all the others like you — thank you. Thank you very very much. :smiley:

For those who don’t know, I work in their local shipping center and really enjoy it. But an odd thing for myself and many of my coworkers - we shop online less than we used to. If this had been say 3 years ago I would have been closer to weekly rather than monthly. In a strange way internet shopping has become too much like “work”.

36

I buy music online all the time.

37

I chose “weekly”, as on average it’s at least once a week. Some weeks several times, while other weeks have no online orders at all.

The majority of our online shopping is Amazon-centered, with Subscribe and Save subscriptions for regular consumables like diapers, air filters, etc… when cheaper or more convenient.

We tend to get a lot of non-clothing, non-grocery stuff from Amazon- books, light bulbs, hardware (paint rollers, screwdrivers, etc…), toys, batteries, electronics, etc… Typically it’s when the items are competitively priced to the local retailers, but much more convenient. For example, I had to replace the serpentine belt on my truck recently. I could have gone to AutoZone/O’Reilly/NAPA and bought one, but I’d have had to go out of my way to a parts store, stand in line, and then wait on the guy to go hunt down the specific belt for my truck. On Amazon, it was more a matter of looking up the part number, ordering it and having it show up 2 days later.

We also get specialty items online from specialty shops that are hard to come by in our area- my wife got a lot of cute baby clothes online, I get some shaving accoutrements online, and I typically got homebrewing stuff online as well (back when I had the time to brew).

But we don’t typically order anything that requires trying on, or any kind of hands-on evaluation online; we typically go buy those in person. We do our best not to go try shit out/on at the brick and mortar store, and then go buy it online… unless it’s from the same place, and only available online in the color/etc… that we’re looking for. In other words, I don’t have a problem going to Wal-Mart and looking at their toasters, choosing one, and then buying the (say) red one from Walmart.com, because the store only has black and stainless steel. I generally won’t go buy it from somewhere else online for a cheaper price- to me that is questionable to go avail myself of someone’s retail location, and then let someone else undercut them online who doesn’t have that overhead.

38

[QUOTE=Musicat]
I understand UPS doesn’t deliver to USPS PO boxes. How about the reverse – does USPS deliver to UPS PO boxes?
[/QUOTE]

By definition, UPS does not have or offer Post Office boxes, but they do have private mailboxes at their UPS Store locations.

You can receive anything at a PMB - UPS, FedEx, US Mail and even drop-off or courier deliveries. I was at the local UPS Store last week and they even went as far as to call one of their PMB customers to let them know a perishable medication delivery was being attempted. With the approval of their customer, they gave the courier the customer’s physical address.

Try that at the Post Office, and they’ll either reject the delivery, or they’ll take it and silently put out a telepathic message of “Hey, you’ve got a package here. Might want to get it before it spoils.”

39

I maintain a spare parts inventory worth about $4 million for a manufacturing facility.
I use hundreds of different vendors and place a dozen or so orders daily. If I can buy on-line it makes it extremely easy. Part#, ship to, bill to, credit card info, ups collect#, order confirmation, order invoice are all at my fingertips. I can process an order in a minute or two.
It really sucks when you go to a vendor’s website and they have no on-line purchasing option. You end up calling them, hope you get a live person to talk to, verbally relay all your information, hope the person on the other end of the line is competent, hope they remeber to e-mail the invoice so you don’t have to call them back in a month and sit on hold for their accounts receivable rep, etc.

40

For whatever reason, most of my online buying is parts - car parts, appliance parts, electronic parts, etc. I find that I can get those cheaper online and it saves me the aggravation of “where locally may carry this specific oven element?” or whatever I’m looking for. I also buy most of my ammo online when I find a particularly good deal.