We've all been there: You're ordering at some delivery place named Luigi's and it turns out that the guy on the phone was born somewhere in the Italian part of Pakistan. The whole order turns into a bit of a lottery: How many of your ordered items is he gonna understand, how many of them will be either wrong or missing upon delivery? And then there's the delivery guy. That incompetent moron, who took 90 minutes to find your house, despite it being his fourth delivery there this month. The pizza is cold and soggy and the toppings are stuck at the top of the box. If there was any justice in this world, then he'd tip you. But you're tipping him anyway - you don't want to piss off the guy who touches your food. Ever.
But lo and behold, it's the 21st century! I order my pizza online and I pay online, too. No more misunderstandings, no misplaced orders and if they screw up, then you have proof that the mistake is on their end. And with no cold, hard cash to hand to a delivery guy, there's usually no tip involved, either. Of course that means there's gonna be a little spit on your pizza the next time you order there, but at least it's the stuff you've asked for.
Everybody shops online. There's probably nothing you can't buy on the internet. And it's a very simple process, too: You click on the stuff you want, send your money and a day later your order is sitting on your porch. It's not rocket surgery. And that's great, because there are certain items, which I just don't want to buy 'in person', if I can somehow avoid doing so.
You see - I happen to be blind like the proverbial bat. Now, all of this stuff about how all of your other senses reach superhuman strength when your eyesight sucks is a load of crap. And until I can figure out how to review video games with my incredible sense of smell, I'm gonna depend on contact lenses.
Have you ever bought a pack of lenses in a shop? Before they even give you what you want, they will give you a free checkup on your eyes. Which sounds nice and convenient, but that's where they usually find out that there's something seriously wrong with your retina and they cannot in their right conscience sell you regular contact lenses. You need the special stuff, which is about four times as expensive as the cheap crap you were planning to buy.
Long story short - not only do they rip you off by charging at least twice the amount of money you'd pay online, but they *always*, without fail, find some reason to sell you something special, something just for you, which is even more expensive.
Of course retailers have also noticed how more and more people are taking their business online and that's why online shops try really, really hard to stand out, to make you feel wanted and appreciated as a customer, up to a point where their user-friendliness reaches grotesque levels. Let's stick to my example of contact lenses here for a moment.
The other day I have received an automatically generated email from the online store, where I bought my contacts. "Your last order has been X months ago. You will need new lenses, soon!"
It's very nice of them to remind me that I'm running out of lenses here, because without their help, I sure as fuck wouldn't have noticed. It's not like I *depend* on the damn things or put them in my eyes every single day, right? I do appreciate what they're doing here, but you really, seriously don't have to remind people that they're running out of their everyday items. Do you need somebody to tell you that you're running out of toothpaste or toilet paper? Actually, that would be kind of funny. Imagine a text message on your mobile while you're on the crapper. "Two more sheets and you'll be wiping with your bare hand!"
But it doesn't stop there. Thanks to eBay and Amazon, it has become some kind of strange tradition to ask for a review. Online stores beg you for a rating!
"Lenstore UK has invited you for a testimony. Please let us know how satisfied you are with our service."
Okay, let's see: I have selected a pack of contact lenses, I have sent them my money, they have sent me the lenses. What do they want me to rate there? What's that 'service' they're talking about? Why is there some scale from 0 to 5 involved and how am I supposed to gauge their performance? If getting what I have ordered means 5 stars and not getting the thing I paid for means 0 stars, then what's 3 stars for? They did send my stuff, but their guy in the shipping department was having a bad day and drew an intimidating frowny face on the box?
Maybe I should do the same thing, email their customer service and tell them to rate me. "On a scale of 1-20, how much did you like my money? How satisfied were you with my chosen method of payment?"
On an unrelated note, how do you like my blog on a scale of 0 to 100? And please let me remind you that you're probably running dangerously low on butter. You might want to change that.
-Cat
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