Shopping online for Xmas toys? Oh the horror!

November 30, 2011 – 11:54AM
The Age

The last words of Kurtz, the ivory trader in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, are among the best known dying words in English Literature: “The horror! The horror!” he uttered.

Kurtz was succumbing to the pestilences of the African jungle, but he could just as easily have been succumbing to an Australian online shopping misadventure.
Last Sunday afternoon, four weeks before Christmas, I made the unprecedented decision not to do all my Christmas shopping at the last minute. After all, this is the time of year that e-commerce could really deliver on its promise and hype. It was the perfect antidote to crowded shopping centres, congested parking lots, and swearing at one’s fellow car drivers on the way there.

So I sat down at my computer with a modest goal for kick-starting my Christmas effort. I was going to buy four things for the kids: a red Angry Birds plush toy, some jumbo colouring books, a spirograph and a mid-priced junior cricket bat.
With a bit of luck I’d be done and dusted in an hour. Or so I thought.

What I got myself into was a hopeless entanglement of frozen screens, out-of-stocks, dysfunctional checkout procedures, limited shipping options, and even a bizarre geography lesson.

It began with the cricket bat. I went to Rebel Sport’s site and the bat selection process was slick and fast. There was no warning of the ambush awaiting me at the checkout.
First, after entering all of my billing and shipping information it was displayed back to me with the name and address truncated. I wasn’t sure whether this was OK not but the site was serenely resistant to the three attempts I made to change the information.

Still mulling the implications I pushed on regardless, but then disaster! I was informed that Randwick NSW 2031, where my delivery address is, had moved overseas. That is to say, a very red warning message told me that some of the contents of my order “were too heavy to ship outside Australia”.
Outside Australia? This was news to me but I’m grateful for Rebel Sport for letting me in on what was obviously a closely guarded secret.
I tried to check out several more times but with no luck – there was absolutely no question about it – Randwick was no longer in the country.
Slightly shaken, I abandoned the cart and moved on to the other three items on my list. I started by googling “toys Australian”. (I wanted to filter out overseas shopping sites.) The sites that came up first were: Toys ‘R’ Us, www.toypot.com.au, Big W, www.onlinetoys.com.au, www.peedeetoys.com.au and www.toysparadise.com.au.
I tried Toys ‘R’ Us first but couldn’t come up with a spirograph, despite the fact that it has been a popular children’s toy for more than 30 years. I was able to find a $79.99 16-inch Angry Birds plush toy but no colouring books. Batting at just for one for three, I had no option but to ditch the cart and move on.
At www.toypot.com.au I had better luck with the colouring books but no spirograph and no Angry Birds. Time to bail – shipping cost of $11.40 was more than the cost of the colouring book.

Big W was next. I couldn’t find a spirograph or Angry Birds plush toy using the search engine.
At www.onlinetoys.com the site was so slow that at first I thought it was down. Finally though, it came up with plenty of Angry Birds plush toys. I selected a 13 centimetre toy for $12.99 and added it to the cart.

It also had the spirograph and I went for the $21.99 deluxe edition.
On a roll, I went for the colouring books but all the ones I wanted were out of stock. I wondered how or why a toy retailer would be out of stock on items as basic as colouring books four weeks before Christmas. It’s like going into the biggest exam of your life without a pen.
Still, two for three is not bad. Now I wanted to know about shipping options. I couldn’t seem to locate any shipping information but I headed for the checkout anyway, deciding to risk the time investment setting up the new customer registration. That took longer than I anticipated because I left out a field the first time and was asked to fill out everything again.

By this time I was getting stressed but I was too far in to back out.
But when I came out the other side of the registration process I saw, for the first time, that the standard shipping option was registered post. The cursed phrase “signature required” glared at me defiantly. Suddenly I had visions of being carded and joining a long irritable line at the post office. Thanks, but no thanks.
Cart abandoned and I was back to square one.

Next was www.peedeetoys.com, but no joy there either. No spirograph and in any case the shipping option requires a signature.
It seemed www.toysparadise.com.au was my Last Chance Saloon. Here I found a deluxe spirograph for $13.43 and an Angry Birds toy for $23.86. Little in the way of colouring books, but getting desperate I went to the checkout anyway. Shipping method was express e-parcel/courier for $8.75 (whatever that means – at this point I was too fed up to care).
Unfortunately the checkout process went randomly haywire and shunted me back to the shopping pages. I had to return to the checkout and re-enter everything again. The site was very slow but finally my order was confirmed.

After several hours and a lot of aggravation I still only had two of the four things I wanted.
But the cricket bat story eventually had a happy ending. The next day I called Rebel Sport’s phone order line and spoke with a lady named Camilla who apologised for the glitches on the site and completed my order with brisk efficiency.

She even gave me the option of having the package left on my doorstep if no one was home. She freely admitted that Randwick was still in Australia.
Now I felt better. My geography wasn’t as bad as I had thought.
But if this is online shopping Australian-style then Kurtz summed it up well: The horror! The horror!

Read the full article here

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