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Shopping Sucks Now

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Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#151

Post by Igelau »

0xffff2 wrote: post #64
arkitaip wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brandless makes no sense to me. They mostly buy from China and their products are more expensive than they should be (their product descriptions don't offer any arguments why, at least). They claim to be health and environmentally-conscious but there's no relevant information to read on the product pages. Take this random Brandless product: https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner Why on Earth wou…

Why wouldn't you buy it? It's a $4 kitchen spoon. What could you possibly want to know? Edit: A bit of poking around suggests that Acacia is a fairly sustainable source of wood, so I would guess that's the thing that makes it eco-friendly. Some of their other acacia products do mention this, but the spoon doesn't for some reason.

I was going to say, that's a pretty nice looking spoon for $4.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#152

Post by Stratoscope »

vector_spaces wrote: post #43
egypturnash wrote: post #12

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…

I feel this so much. Sometimes I'll look up objects I've bought in brick & mortar stores that I've been completely happy with, and find that they have dismal reviews. This is why for certain items I make a conscious effort to not bother looking at the reviews. Even if it were possible for me to find the best doormat, it simply wouldn't be worth the time, labor, and emotional energy of sifting through reviews and foru…

> I'd love to find the best cat wand toy.

I don't know if there is a best one, but after trying several, my cats found one they really like:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01ANUU12I/

We got this expansion kit to go with it:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00UZK5WQC/

One nice thing about this wand is that it has three telescoping sections, so the tip section is thin and wiggly.

It's so wiggly that the cats learned to use it on their own!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#153

Post by chihuahua »

pontifier wrote: post #137
thiagomgd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is especially weird when it's cheaper online on the SAME store. That happened with me in brazil.

Happened to me in target the other day.

At Target, at the checkout you can show them the price on their own website, and they will sell it to you for the online price.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#154

Post by sokoloff »

smacktoward wrote: post #32
egypturnash wrote: post #12

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…

I think the key to the article can be found in this passage: > [T]he problem is that now, somewhat suddenly, perfect knowledge of the perfect glove, for you specifically, exists, if you simply do enough research. When you're shopping in a physical store, you have no expectation that you're going to find the absolute, one-and-only perfect glove (or whatever) in the world for you. Even in the largest stores, you unders…

> The infinite variety of online shopping tells us to set our expectations higher than that.

I suspect online dating has some similar effects.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#155

Post by chihuahua »

IgorPartola wrote: post #146

I started riding a motorcycle two springs ago. In that short time I went though six pairs of gloves. Turns out, buying gloves online sucks. Sizing is terrible since the only size is the width of your palm. Fingers too long or too short or different lengths? You are out of luck. Thick fingers or thin fingers? Nope. Glove fits well but has an uncomfortable inner seam? Gotcha again. Love the glove but not the closure sy…

That has also been my experience (for motorcycling and bicycling). Gloves are the one item I have to buy in person.

REI stores are a great place for buying winter gloves and also bicycling gloves. Other than that: Costco, bicycle dealers, motorcycle dealers.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#156

Post by chihuahua »

kortilla wrote: post #143
macNchz wrote: post #35

Faced with the situation described in this article many times in recent years, I've come to appreciate the value of the wholesale buyer at traditional retailers. While obviously there are a variety of incentives involved, the buyer has evaluated a variety of products and found ones that they not only expect to be profitable for them, but that are also something they expect their customers to like and want to buy. Als…

This is pretty much the main reason to shop at Costco. I’m not really convinced anything is actually a good bulk deal. It’s just a matter of having a place to shop where you can safely grab stuff and have a decently high floor on quality.

At Costco, the generous return policy also inspires confidence. If Costco stocks an item that's not very good, they will get many returns which cost them money, so they have an incentive to research any item they sell to filter out bad quality.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#157

Post by rdiddly »

The perfect knowledge she claims to be burdened by is anything but. The actual problem here is imperfection of knowledge. What do you know, when someone tells you a glove is soft? What do you know, when they tell you it's waterproof? What do you know when they tell you it's leather? You know nothing for sure if all you've got to rely on is second-hand hearsay information. You're stuck in Plato's cave, chained to the wall.

Shopping online should be reserved for cases when either you already know most of what you need to know, through first-hand experience, or when you're willing to do the buy-and-return thing a couple times to find out.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#158

Post by chihuahua »

kortilla wrote: post #143
macNchz wrote: post #35

Faced with the situation described in this article many times in recent years, I've come to appreciate the value of the wholesale buyer at traditional retailers. While obviously there are a variety of incentives involved, the buyer has evaluated a variety of products and found ones that they not only expect to be profitable for them, but that are also something they expect their customers to like and want to buy. Als…

This is pretty much the main reason to shop at Costco. I’m not really convinced anything is actually a good bulk deal. It’s just a matter of having a place to shop where you can safely grab stuff and have a decently high floor on quality.

There are many things at Costco where you save quite a bit compared to buying elsewhere: Cheese, smoked salmon, maple syrup, vitamins, cereal bars, peanuts, Kerry Gold butter, Chobani plain yogurt ($3 vs $6), socks.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#159

Post by Gibbon1 »

rdiddly wrote: post #157

The perfect knowledge she claims to be burdened by is anything but. The actual problem here is imperfection of knowledge. What do you know, when someone tells you a glove is soft? What do you know, when they tell you it's waterproof? What do you know when they tell you it's leather? You know nothing for sure if all you've got to rely on is second-hand hearsay information. You're stuck in Plato's cave, chained to the…

Used to be brick an mortar stores had buyers. To get stuff on the shelf you needed to get past them. They were experts at evaluating products and would reject 'crap'.

Now we have corrupt and easily gamed review processes and a race to the bottom.

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