So, since I couldn't very easily go Christmas shopping this year, I ordered pretty much everything online. Here are a few tips I've learned about online shopping...
1) Best sites to order from:
Walmart- Yeah, yeah. I know. Screw the corporate giant. But I'm too poor at the moment to protest. They had the cheapest prices, free or next-to-nothing shipping, and everything got here within a few days looking like what I expected.
Amazon- The trick I learned here is to sort by price and then look for the Amazon deal. A lot of times they can't list their price because of some legal reason, but if you click on the link, you'll see it's a lot cheaper than most of the others. And it's easy to return directly to them. Bonus- the item was here in 2 days.
Terry's Village- I like this store for Christmas decorations mostly. They are very good at sending replacements if anything is broken or not to your liking. A couple of the items I received just looked poorly made and they sent me replacements with no questions asked.
2) Sites that need improvement:
Kohl's- While I like shopping in their stores because you can get a good deal (especially with the coupons), the online experience has not been so great. I am STILL waiting on an order from Dec 4th to get here.
ToysRUs- First of all, half of the stuff I wanted was out of stock online. Most of the items got here quickly, so I'll give them credit for that. However, one item was listed as "located in stock" for over a week before it actually shipped. Still waiting on it to get here.
2) Don't order hard novelty candy through the mail. It WILL be broken. Every last piece of it. Yes, they'll send you a replacement, but it will probably be broken too. Just send the husband to the store to buy it instead.
3) Read the dimensions. Otherwise, you will end up with a 6 foot tall plush cardinal bird for your 90 year old grandmother. On the upside, it does jingle when you shake it.
4) Read what the item is made of. You'd think this would be a given, but I learned my lesson when the snowman frame I ordered turned out to be made of cloth, not wood. Who makes frames of cloth?!
5) Order EARLY, especially if you want Christmas novelty items. Apparently stores only order limited amounts of these things and when they're gone, they're gone. I ordered the weekend of Dec 4th and still couldn't find a couple of the things I wanted.
Having said all of this, I again apologize for any random gifts my family may receive this year and for the disproportionate sizes in which they will come. Happy shopping!
When I lived down there and Scott was traveling all the time, I did 90% of my shopping online. I lucked out every time and everything I ordered was in stock, arrived in one piece, looked like it was supposed to and arrived well ahead of when it was promised. I loved Amazon...even when it was something shipping from one of their other vendors, I had excellent service and all the sutff from the actual Amazon site was shipped free. I also loved ordering from Barnes & Noble..again..always in stock, free shipping and it arrived very quickly. Another site I had no trouble with was Old Navy. I think I did mostly online shopping for about 5 years down there and I also loved that I could have things shipped to my daughter or my sister in law directly for free too. I'd just have them wrap them when they arrived there. With Scott being gone all the time and working while Scott H was in school, it meant I had no other way to shop. I ran to Target or somewhere else close, but it was easier for it to come to me!
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