Friday, July 17, 2020

Online shopping

I’ve done a fair amount of online shopping for years, but the pandemic has stepped up the variety of places I've shopped. Some are great; some are good; and some are terrible.

The terrible:

Best Buy - not my purchase, but my mom ordered (and paid for) an iPad early in the pandemic. It did not arrive, as clearly showed by the tracking number, but Best Buy has not refunded her. It's now at a credit card dispute.

IKEA - I ordered a coffee press on April 4. A couple of weeks later I contacted them to ask when they expected it to ship. The rep I was talking to said it had shipped. A month after I placed the order, it still hadn't shipped according to their site and customer service was no longer reachable. I asked them for a refund on Twitter, which also didn't arrive. Another credit card dispute. (Curbside pickup was all but non-existent here last time I looked, and the line to get in is huge. Moral of the story: no IKEA for the foreseeable future, don't even look.)

The good:

Rona - in-store pickups take a couple of weeks last time I tried, but online orders ship quickly. I ordered a desk from them (time to stop working at the kitchen table) and it shipped within a couple of days. Unfortunately, Purolator took a couple of weeks to get it here, but that's on them, not Rona.

Cabelas - Ordered coffee press #2 from here. They were good about telling me when it would ship, and meeting the date. Unfortunately, UPS took longer than expected to get it here; not Cabela's fault, though.

Amazon - back during the coffee press saga, they were forecasting a month for 2-day delivery. That seems to have fixed itself, though. (Although I have now cancelled Prime so I don't buy from them as often.)

Costco - They forecast a couple of weeks for an order, and meet or beat their estimates.

The great:

Staples - I ordered a monitor, keyboard/mouse, power bar, headset, and paper on Monday night; by Wednesday night I had everything except the headset, which is projected to be here on Monday.

Walmart - again, ordered some shirts and a set of shelves on a Monday and had everything by Thursday.

Indigo - ordered some books on Tuesday, had them by Thursday.