If you are like 76 percent of Canadians, you have probably ordered something online and may be considering doing your Christmas shopping over the Internet.
The average Canadian spent about $550 shopping online over the past year with almost three million households reporting some kind of online purchase. And why not? Online shopping is fast, convenient and allows you to comparison shop at the click of a mouse. But there can be some issues with online shopping.
First of all, I never catch the delivery person when I am at home, so I must always go pick-up the package, completely missing the whole point of "convenient" home delivery.
When I have ordered things online I find that returning items can be difficult. Quite often, you must pay to send back a purchase, which is an unfortunate expense to bear considering that you are paying to give something back. More often than not I end up keeping the item, whether it is ill-fitting or not, just to avoid returning it, leaving me stuck with something I can't use and trying to pawn it off on someone else.
Wasting money aside, it is also difficult to imagine what the item you wish to purchase will be like in real life. You can't touch it and despite listing the dimensions, as a reputable online store should, it can be difficult to determine exactly how it will look and feel once it arrives.
I have heard stories from local business people about their customers getting "duped" by online shopping sites. Purchasing certain items online, such as jewellery, can be a big gamble because one cannot determine the quality of a small, expensive item by simply viewing it on-screen.
Also, when you order something online, it may not be exactly like the picture on the website. When you buy something at a local store, you can see first-hand what you are buying.
The Canadian Consumer Handbook offers several suggestions about how to stay safe when it comes to shopping online. One suggestion that I found useful was looking for sites with addresses that begin with https:// as the "s" indicates a secure site with secure payment methods.
Online shopping is a convenient way to purchase stuff that may not be available locally, but it will never compare to the customer service that you get in-person or the reliability of an on-site store. You can't walk into an Internet site and say "this doesn't work" or "I changed my mind about this" like you can here at home.
