Rethinking this online shopping thing

Here in the boonies, I am perpetually delighted by Sunday deliveries.

If these disingenuous sellers are so vanishingly rare, I must say it must have been some really bad luck for me to encounter one on my first journey into Ebay.

But here’s my overall point. I got stung by this seller on Amazon. On certain sorts of products, sellers like these are ubiquitous on Amazon. Yes, Amazon made it good. But they let way too many sellers like this set up accounts and list nonexistent products and rip people off, not just once, but for weeks, before they shut 'em down, if they ever actually do shut 'em down. I don’t have an answer for Amazon as to how to stop them.

My point, mundane and pointless as it was, is that too many lousy experiences have begun to sour me on the online shopping experience.

I’ve never had any real trouble with online shopping, it’s always been pretty ‘fire and forget’ for me. One advantage is that I live in a nice neighborhood and have a bush surrounding my front porch, so deliveries when I’m not home don’t go missing. If I lived where shipping was more difficult I would probably have a different opinion.

I don’t touch Amazon sellers who don’t have a lot of positive transactions, and am unlikely to on Ebay unless I get the impression they really are an individual getting rid of a few things. If you want your experience shopping online to be better, only deal with sellers with a good reputation. Yes, that means you’re not giving the ‘new guys’ a chance, but that’s not your job (and enough people will use them that it really isn’t a society-wide problem).