You are interested in an online shop, theoretically: they claim to be selling products that interest you. But before you are permitted to explore their specific items, you must sign up a membership, including payment details. Do you:
0 voters
There’s a furniture store that advertises like mad on social media, and a lot of the pieces they show look really nice. But I have to create an account to browse, so nope. Fuck on outta here with that noise.
Probably just a dumb marketing department but it makes me feel they’re not fully legit.
It tells me that they’re less interested in my business than they are in selling my info to marketers.
There’s a site I’ve seen advertised that only let you see the merchandise if you logged in with a Facebook account. (Checking now, you can also login with an Apple ID, but either way, you can’t just browse anonymously.)
There’s a couple of high end “business to business” tool/engineering outlets that pop up in search results for particular items from time to time. They will not show prices unless you log in. I generally ignore them but I’ve logged in a couple of times using a throwaway when I’ve been having trouble finding something elsewhere. Their prices are invariably so astronomical that I won’t buy from them, even if they are the only outlet that has what I want - I just find another way.
They are major well run outlets so they clearly aren’t in it just to sell your details. I suspect they figure they don’t even want to be in the retail market so they deliberately make it awkward for non-account customers.
For me it was a clothing store. I’m pretty sure I’d find something there I would want to buy but nope. Their loss.
I’m with Esprise. Screw ‘em.
I picked option 2 because I’d nearly always just leave. Such a limitation seems like that’s what they want me to do. It’s far better for business to get people interested in your products first before throwing up requirements that might push them away.
That said, I could conceivably see a situation where they are the only one who sells the item in question, which I already knew about from elsewhere. Or if I somehow already knew their prices (including shipping) were much better than anyone else’s. In those cases, I might—very reluctantly—sign up.
That said, I’m genuinely surprised that anyone out there actually does this.
Edit: merely not showing prices is a little bit different, in that at least I know they have the item. So, if I’m getting desperate, I might sign up to check the price. However, I’d be more likely to see if I could find the price in some other manner. I’ve even once used one of those sites that provide logins and passwords for various sites.
Oh, and I always look up new sites to see if they are legit before giving them money.
Take away one of the Meekly Comply votes and add it to the Close The Window and Forget They Exist pile - I clicked the wrong thing thanks to a badly timed cat head-bump. I guess Mouse likes shopping more than I knew 
I wanted to learn a new language and I shopped for online courses. One site wanted me to register even before they told what languages they are offering. I closed that immidiately.
The one that prompted this thread is misfitsmarket. Another “imperfect food” seller…forget the name of the other one. Step 1, sign ip for your “free” membership, which they then tout, clearly not understanding how very little appeal that holds for me when I have no idea what I can buy or how much it will cost, so fuck off very much anyway.
As I recall, this is/was the deal with Massdrop (now just Drop, I think). They’d have some big limited time amazing deal but you could only see what it was after you registered. Was a quick and easy nope and I only remember they exist because I still see ads sometimes for them.
I don’t even like online businesses pressuring you to sign up for an account when you’re making a purchase. Just make it a one-time order and I’ll deal with the horrid inconvenience of having to provide you with my address and other info if I ever buy from you again.
While I’m griping: what is it with companies sending e-mail “reminders” when you put something in your cart and then decide against completing the purchase? No, I didn’t “forget”, I consciously decided against spending the money. It tempts you to go back a few more times and leave stuff in your cart, just to drive them nuts.
Of course that email is automated so no one being driven nuts.
I have neither.
I don’t care for the reminders, but I DO very much appreciate that they hang on to my cart contents; another thing that will drive me away from a retailer is when they do NOT retain the cart contents.
I do a lot of what I guess I’ll call window shopping, load things into a cart as I cruise around that I think I might want to purchase, but not right now. I will come back in a day or a month or 6 months and buy some or all of it. If the cart has gone poof, I just say fuck it. My Amazon cart is always full, plus wishlists plus tons of stuff I have sent to “save for later”.
On the other hand, Amazon has the most SHITE search engine in the whole internet, and I don’t understand why I don’t see more people bitching about it. How can Amazon be Amazon and have a search tool that sucks that hard?
My guess is that places you outside their target market.
Asking me to sign up for an account is bad enough, but I might do that if the item I want is important enough. But adding my payment details too? That’s an automatic nope. You don’t need my credit card info until and unless I actually decide to buy something. If it turns out you don’t have what I need, I don’t want some company I don’t intend to do business with having that info.
I mean, would you shop at a physical store that demanded you swipe your credit card on your way in the front door? Nope, never.
You should be able to go back up, click “Show vote” then choose again.