Tuesday 4 April 2006

Online Shopping

eBay is a celebration and a curse. There's an unbelievable amount of stuff you can get there for unbelievably low prices...or at least much cheaper than what you pay for at retail stores in NZ. Plus the virtual world has no boundaries so international shopping is possible...as long as the seller is willing to ship to wherever you are.

The curse of it is that it's pretty addictive. Yes I admit I'm an eBay shopping addict. You can easily spend hours just surfing around ebay looking for stuff. It's unending coz every few minutes, someone is selling something new! It's much like a gigantic mall really, but ever-changing. Bidding is addictive too with auctions and when you aren't on ebay, you're thinking about your auctions or wondering if the seller in the auction you lost might restock and hold another auction. You'd have to be vigilant to get good deals too. I can recall quite a couple of times where I was kicking myself for not being quicker to bid. Quite recently I missed out on bidding on a 1GB SD card from the US. Postage included, it was really really cheap. I only saw it when the auction was about to close....like a minute before, but internet service here is so awful that by the time the page loaded to put in my bid the auction was over. The card sold for US$7.50. Argh! Even if I counted in postage costs and currency convertion costs a 1GB SD card for US$7.50 is dirt cheap compared to what NZ retailers are selling and even on NZ's version of eBay - Trade Me, where it sells for at least NZ$90.

Still, what I really like about eBay is receiving your item. The anticipation is killing of course much like knowing you have a present and can't open it yet. The best part as I've mentioned is receiving the item. It's basically like Chirstmas or your birthday every time and you conveniently forget that you've paid for it. I'm sure those of you who have shopped online before understand the joy of ripping open the package and getting to feel the item after seeing only pictures of it online. While sometimes there are a couple of glitches in purchasing stuff online, especially where clothes are concerned, most of the time if you're a careful shopper you don't make many mistakes i.e. you ask heaps of questions before purchase. I think I've only gotten a bad sizing for an item once. Still, I suppose I could always resell it.

While shopping on eBay brings back the happy moments of Christmas and birthdays, I must say that the horrific side of eBay ultimately shows itself....in the form of my credit card bill. Ouch! Definitely I feel the hole in my pocket after payment catches up with me, but then it brings me back to the point where I did get the stuff at bargain prices.... Oh yeah...

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