11–20 of 230 posts
It's been a long time since a long-form vice article has really resonated with me. I am happy that we're clearly moving away from a world of a million variations of the same plastic crap to a place where consumers are demanding the right thing.
I think my total time, including the bus rides downtown and back (even though I was probably doing other things downtown on that trip like “working”), was probably less than she spent opening ten thousand different tabs in her search for The Perfect Glove.
And then in a couple years I had to do it again because I could only find one of the gloves when it started to be too cold for bare hands again. It ain’t worth investing a ton of time into picking gloves or umbrellas or other things that tend to get lost or separated.
Shopping for physical goods on the Internet sucks.
Shopping only sucks if you're in a hurry and even then it's hard to argue that it's gotten worse, just a different set of problems.
That "tyranny of perfect information" begets FOMO. If you'd looked at one more site or one more review you might have discovered a "better" (cheaper, high quality, higher utility) item. I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman?…
The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba imported by a guy who read a How To Make Money On Amazon book, or just marked up directly by the same people selling on Alibaba. Heck, even the "brand items" may turn out to be a cheap clone that someone had shipped to Amazon fulfillment, bypassing their incredibly stringent "I pinky-swear this really is the authentic item" vetting process.
When I was living in the PNW and realized I direly needed gloves, I just hit up a few of the department stores downtown until I found some that met my criteria. Which are probably similar to those of this author, I wanted some that looked cute, had a conductive patch on the finger so I could use my phone without taking them off, would fit on my long hands with long fingernails, and weren’t super expensive gloves desi…
When I was living in the PNW and realized I direly needed gloves, I just hit up a few of the department stores downtown until I found some that met my criteria. Which are probably similar to those of this author, I wanted some that looked cute, had a conductive patch on the finger so I could use my phone without taking them off, would fit on my long hands with long fingernails, and weren’t super expensive gloves desi…
Buying physical commodities or items where those factors don't matter on the Internet is incredible. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to talk to anyone, I don't have to lug anything anywhere, etc.
Buying something without actually holding it in your hands and testing it out will never be an awesome experience. You can't really trust reviews and ratings. But you can usually return stuff and I don't see why the author made such a fuss about returning.
That "tyranny of perfect information" begets FOMO. If you'd looked at one more site or one more review you might have discovered a "better" (cheaper, high quality, higher utility) item. I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman?…
> Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk. The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba…
I find “on, say, Amazon” entertaining. Amazon may well be the worst largeish US online vendor. It’s gotten to the point where I trust eBay more.
If you want winter gear, buy from one of several excellent online stores dedicated to it.
> I’d love to only spend $17 except there is no way 17-dollar leather gloves won’t be fake and off color and smell of gasoline when they arrive, and after only a few wears the lining will pill or develop holes. I’d love to just buy the $60 gloves except that seems like a pretty large amount of money to spend on non-weatherproof gloves, and how can I, when there are identical $17 gloves right there.
It could also be that the $60 gloves came from the same factory and are exactly identical to the $17 gloves, and if you buy them you're going to get ripped off by at least $43.
I wouldn't say that the problem of shopping is now "perfect information," it's rather a deluge of information liberally peppered with dishonesty and arbitrariness.