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E-Commerce: The Downside to Online Shopping

By Megan Santosus

May 15, 2003 — CIO — In the past few months, it seems as if I’ve put enough oil in my car to rival what the Exxon Valdez left on the shores of Prince William Sound. With more miles than Elizabeth Taylor and enough rust to make the Titanic look relatively pristine, I figured that my ride needed an upgrade. So I hopped online hoping to make quick work of finding my next car.

What should’ve been easy?checking out the 2003 models on the website of a certain Japanese car manufacturer?turned out to be impossible. When I first logged on to the site, I was informed that I needed to download a fancy plug-in before I could see any cars. Do I know what version my browser is? Well, of course not, so I had to try a few different options. After a few miscues, I could enter the site, but I still hadn’t seen a single photo of the car I wanted. Every time I clicked on the link for a visual, I got sent to an online version of purgatory. "You are not authorized to use this page," read the boldface type, and the fine print wasn’t any better: "You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied."

Credentials? All I did was click on a link. Could it be possible that the carmaker somehow knows about that moving violation I committed back in 1985?

Bring back the days of the smarmy salesman, please. I’ve had similar off-putting experiences with other sites ranging from high-tech ones, where some level of technical sophistication (a doctorate in computer science, perhaps) is expected, to basic consumer goods companies where appealing to the lowest common denominator should, you’d think, be the rule. While looking for an area retailer that carries cool-looking basketball sneakers, I never got past the shoe company’s homepage because my browser isn’t up to snuff. When my printer went on the fritz, I thought a quick visit to the company’s website might yield a treasure trove of troubleshooting information, or at the very least a customer service number. But I’ll never know because I was rebuffed at the opening gate after I repeatedly declined to find out more about the company’s new products in a pop-up window.

You Can Check Out, but You Can Never Leave

If there’s one saving grace about the experiences I had at car and printer sites, it’s that I didn’t have to invest any time inputting information or navigating the seemingly endless check-out processes. On more than one occasion, when I’ve tried to buy something, I’ve actually completed the check-out process and submitted my order only to be informed that something went wrong along the way.

 

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