Online shopping....for those technically minded

Bee

Bee

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U.K.
Online shopping: The pensioner who pioneered a home shopping revolution


People spend billions each year shopping online, but few know it was a grandmother from Gateshead who pioneered it from her living room.
It was an order for margarine, cornflakes and eggs that paved the way for an industry now estimated to be worth £117.6bn ($186.1bn) to the UK economy alone.
Grandmother Jane Snowball, 72, sat down in an armchair in her Gateshead home in May 1984, picked up a television remote control and used it to order the groceries from her local supermarket.
She was part of a council initiative to help the elderly. What she - and everyone else with her at the time - didn't realise was that her simple shopping list was arguably the world's first home online shop.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24091393
 

A lovely story but one that stretches the definition of "online", I think - at least in modern terms.

As the article itself mentions, teletexting had been around for a while already. Just hooking it up to a computer and "controlling" input with a remote (without the attendant feedback from the computer) doesn't of itself make it an "online transaction", unless you also consider calling 9-1-1 an online action since it also involves computers.

But I suppose that since the terms "online" and "offline" are being used as slang for everything these days, even when concerning in-person meetings, there's no real harm done. It just overshadows the real computer-to-computer technology that is today called "online".
 

To stretch it further, 'online chatting' has been around as long as the telegraph. Morse operators chatted among themselves.

I know we teleprinter operators back in the 60's did too, we'd yack with operators all over the country through our keyboards when things were quiet, like train strikes and Christmas holidays. We'd pass on each other's 'posts' to whatever other centres we were connected with so eventually the whole lot were 'networked'. We even had 'usernames' usually initials but sometimes a word to identify each particular operator.

It built a great camaraderie among the operators that individual phone calls couldn't have accomplished. We'd visit if we were travelling in their areas, to meet them, just like some forum pals do these days.

Everything old is new again as the saying goes.

I guess jungle drums might count too.
 
And to keep stretching things ....
Online shopping is the beginning of the end of shopping malls .... we are seeing the start of that move already.

From the article ...
Green Street Advisor, an analysis firm that tracks REITs, has forecast that 10 percent of the roughly 1,000 large malls in the U.S. will fail within the next 10 years and be converted into something with far less retail. That’s a conservative estimate; many mall CEOs predict the attrition rate will be higher.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/01/the-coming-death-of-the-american-shopping-mall/
 
They've been winding down here too, the smaller ones anyway. It's hard to feel sorry for Mall developers though, they've priced themselves out of the market with high rents to smaller retailers. It's the logical move for them to go online to survive.

I'd be selling Mall shares and buying into courier companies.
 
Amazon.com had 2012 earnings of $61.1 billion. With losses of $0.09/share. Go figure. But they are a giant. They define what online shopping is in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century.

In fact, they're such a whale that there are thousands and thousands of little sucker-fish that have attached themselves and hope to derive some benefit from doing so. Their attachment can take the form of just an associate seller who gets a small commission when someone clicks on a text link inserted in their website, all the way to automatically-updated e-commerce stores with hundreds of pages that offer everything Amazon does.

Their Kindle books and readers revolutionized how people read, and Kindle has become a publishing giant.

But they aren't just a stuffy old-school general store grown to mutant scale - they also have a sense of humor, as witnessed by some of the things you can buy there:


  • Soil from the Roswell UFO crash site
  • Dolly The Sexy Inflatable Sheep
  • A "magical unicorn mask"
  • ... and of course, canned unicorn meat
  • 1,500 live ladybugs for only $12
  • a stegosaurus costume for your dog
  • wolf urine
  • and one of my favorites - "How To Bombproof Your Horse"

bombproof your horse.jpg
 
Out of respect for Fern I won't make a crack about that inflatable sheep. She'd only throw one back anyway.

The postage costs for Amazon are horrendous to buy stuff from here. I have a couple of times because no one else had any but I usually check out what they've got and then buy it elsewhere. Strangely Amazon UK charge only a fraction of the postage cost that the US one does even though it's further away. It arrives quicker from the UK too.
 
Great thread and interesting info. I'm a Home Shopping Network (HSN) or QVC shopper and have always had great luck. I don't order often, but they carry some lines that work extremely well for shorties like me. And the rest of my shopping is done on line, other than consignment store & thrift shop bargains. I HATE MALLS!!!
 
Buying online is a great convenience, but I miss "window shopping". I especially would rather roam the stacks of a book store looking for something that catches my eye than search for a book online.
 
Diwundrin said:
The postage costs for Amazon are horrendous to buy stuff from here. I have a couple of times because no one else had any but I usually check out what they've got and then buy it elsewhere. Strangely Amazon UK charge only a fraction of the postage cost that the US one does even though it's further away. It arrives quicker from the UK too.
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That's strange, but I guess that's also the world of Amazon. I'm so used to being ripped-off on S&H charges that I don't even notice anymore, unless it's REALLY outrageous.

Now to me, Amazon isn't even half as bad as those infomercials on TV - "But wait! Order in the next 10 minutes and we'll send you a SECOND inflatable sheep inflator - you just pay separate S&H charges."

Yeah, and the inflator costs $10.99 and S&H is $8.99 ... come on, guys ... I don't need an inflatable sheep inflator THAT badly, and if I did I'd wait a few days until it shows up on AsSeenOnTV.com or Half.com or even Craigslist. One of our local department stores also carries all that junk, so if worse came to worse I'd jump on the bus and carry my inflatable sheep inflator home.

Katybug said:
Great thread and interesting info. I'm a Home Shopping Network (HSN) or QVC shopper and have always had great luck. I don't order often, but they carry some lines that work extremely well for shorties like me. And the rest of my shopping is done on line, other than consignment store & thrift shop bargains. I HATE MALLS!!!
Click to expand...

Oof-dah! My roomie is a QVC junkie - I seriously think she needs an intervention. Her mantra is that "They have EZ-Pay" or whatever they call it, where they split the cost into several payments. Yeah, Nicky the Nose used to do the same thing when I was behind on my numbers payments.

And charge 300% interest while he was at it.

That Guy said:
Buying online is a great convenience, but I miss "window shopping". I especially would rather roam the stacks of a book store looking for something that catches my eye than search for a book online.
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Books, yes. Clothes, yes. Anything else I'm happy to buy online.

Some of the best times I ever had (well, beside the drinking, drugging, strippers and inflatable sheep) were spent roaming the stacks in smelly old book stores.
 
SifuPhil said:
Amazon.com had 2012 earnings of $61.1 billion. With losses of $0.09/share. Go figure. But they are a giant. They define what online shopping is in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century.

In fact, they're such a whale that there are thousands and thousands of little sucker-fish that have attached themselves and hope to derive some benefit from doing so. Their attachment can take the form of just an associate seller who gets a small commission when someone clicks on a text link inserted in their website, all the way to automatically-updated e-commerce stores with hundreds of pages that offer everything Amazon does.

Their Kindle books and readers revolutionized how people read, and Kindle has become a publishing giant.

But they aren't just a stuffy old-school general store grown to mutant scale - they also have a sense of humor, as witnessed by some of the things you can buy there:


  • Soil from the Roswell UFO crash site
  • Dolly The Sexy Inflatable Sheep
  • A "magical unicorn mask"
  • ... and of course, canned unicorn meat
  • 1,500 live ladybugs for only $12
  • a stegosaurus costume for your dog
  • wolf urine
  • and one of my favorites - "How To Bombproof Your Horse"

View attachment 2617
Click to expand...

LMAO! Sometimes it seems you make this stuff up, but know very well you don't. Truth is stranger than fiction!
icon7.png
 
Jackie22 said:
Overstock is one of my favorite online shopping sites......great area rug prices...free shipping.
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I like Overstock too, Jackie. On line shopping w/free shipping is just way too appealing compared to the multiple disadvantages of store shopping. I'm sorry for the retailers, but we do what's easiest and most convenient.
 
Diwundrin said:
Out of respect for Fern I won't make a crack about that inflatable sheep. She'd only throw one back anyway.

The postage costs for Amazon are horrendous to buy stuff from here. I have a couple of times because no one else had any but I usually check out what they've got and then buy it elsewhere. Strangely Amazon UK charge only a fraction of the postage cost that the US one does even though it's further away. It arrives quicker from the UK too.
Click to expand...

I totally LOVE shopping at Amazon !
I have found that there are many things that I can buy on Amazon and save money on them, as opposed to shopping locally for the same item. Amazon has sales on different items every day.
You can find some things up to 75% off the retail price.
I recently bought a bathroom scale from Amazon that was listed at $72 retail, and it was on sale for $16 online, although they also carry items that are not on sale, so you have to search for the bargains in whatever product you are shopping for.
I have Amazon Prime, so 2-day shipping is FREE on any item with the "Prime" symbol on it.

I usually feed Diamond Natural dog food to my dogs. (Diamond also makes Costco Kirkland and Taste of the Wild dog food).
I thought I would just look on Amazon to see what they carried in dog food, and discovered that they carried the Diamond products, and my Small Dog Chicken and Rice was 25% off.
I ordered it on Wednesday (2 day free delivery), and to my amazement, first thing Thursday morning, FedEx was at my door with my dog food !
I not only saved the price discount, I paid no tax, and did not have to drive to get it at the feed store, so I also saved gas.

I don't know if Prime is available outside of the US, but it is worth checking on, at least, Di. If you can get it, you would save on shipping, and it would arrive much faster.
My daughter even orders her staple items, such as toilet paper, from Amazon, and she has them on a recurring order, so she saves an additional price discount, and they simply send the items to her periodically.
With Prime, you also have access to all of the Amazon movies and TV shows online, plus the Kindle Lending Library, providing you have a Kindle. Plus, there are free books you can download from the Kindle Store, and the titles change every day.
So, overall, I think that Amazon Prime is well worth the cost.
 

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