In the good old days of shopping–back when ladies in dresses, hats and gloves descended on department stores en masse on sale days–the pursuit of bargains was a chaotic adventure undertaken by few and won by fewer. Most often the melee centered around the clearance table. Within three minutes of opening its doors, the store would assign the lowest ranking schmuck to assess the damages and try to restore order to the display, as happy shoppers walked toward the cash registers with hard-won merchandise they elbowed each other to get.
This disintegrated into the madhouses in WalMarts and Targets worldwide. Nobody bothers to wear hats and gloves; they practice taekwondo to nab a bargain these days.
What’s worse is live shopping online.
There is no equitable way to make sure everybody has a turn at getting what they want; when it comes to collectibles, the struggle is tougher. I should know, because I started a collection of my own, and I lost out big-time the other day with the online battle leaving me empty-handed.
The makers of the collectibles did an hour-long broadcast on social media, but it was scheduled an hour before I got off of work. Special editions would be introduced and magically appear on the website during the broadcast so viewers could buy, similar to QVC.
In the past, logging in later hasn’t been an issue, but when I logged in one hour behind the live broadcast, I found that no items were visible on the web page. I tried every trick in the book to make it happen, from refreshing the browser to changing display parameters. No luck.
The new collectibles included one that immediately spoke to me, and I wanted to get it. But how, when I couldn’t even select on the web page? I had an appointment, so I left, came back and tried repeatedly with no success.
The staff wisely took the evening and weekend off, so no contacting them.
So what did I do? I went on EBay.
We didn’t have that back in the days of the bargain table: when an item was out, it was out (unless you were in a department store that would check the other stores and have it shipped for in-store pick-up or home delivery). The equivalent of Amazon back in the hat-and-gloves days was “charge and send,” which sent all your purchases to your home via delivery truck. Each department store had their own fleet, and their own delivery day. Women anxiously watched for their packages to arrive. With overnight services and Amazon, we’re having sort of the same experience today.
I ended up paying a bit more for an overseas shipment, but I got what I wanted without martial arts or damage to my elbow.
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