MowryJournal.com   Life's Passions

A good friend of ours is snake bit. That’s a technical term in sales for a person, that no matter what you try, always has a bad sales experience with a particular company.

Jill is snake bit by Amazon.com. No matter what she buys, no matter what delivery she chooses … it’s wrong. Snake bit.

I, on the other hand, love Amazon.com’s prime shipping. Buy practically anything on their site (which means, buy practically anything) and, with Amazon Prime, you’ll have that item in two days with “free” shipping. You actually pay something like $90 per year for that “free” shipping, but when you buy everything from there, it is worth it. IMHO.

Jill’s mileage may vary, after being snake bit so many times.

However, one item I don’t buy from Amazon – or from a regular brick and mortar store – is my breakfast food of choice. The only place to buy Post Cereal’s Great Grains Crunchy Pecan, uh, cereal, is Walmart.com, where you can buy a box for only $3.28. Amazon.com charges $5.86/box when you buy 7 (or $12.49/box when you buy two, or $8.50/box when you buy one. No, it doesn’t make sense).

So I buy my cereal at Walmart.com … except you can only buy 4 boxes at a time. And, to get free shipping, you have to have a minimum order of $50.

So, last night, Velda and I had to get creative with our purchase from Walmart.com to get a $50 order. We bought cat food, kitty litter and soap. And my maximum order of 4 boxes of cereal. $51 order = free shipping. Done.

Except Walmart.com told us we wouldn’t get the shipment until March 4. OK, no problem, I just won’t have breakfast cereal for a week.

And then they delivered the entire order TODAY, in less than 24 hours. After telling me that delivery would take 8 days, it took less than 1. And they didn’t even tell me that the shipment would be here sooner! They just got it here earlier than promised and expected me to be happy about it.

I’m not. I’m frustrated that they can’t control their inventory. I’m frustrated that they won’t let me buy the quantity of cereal that I want. I am just plain frustrated with Walmart, so I’ve apparently joined a pretty big club.

I also went online shopping this week at HomeDepot.com, because Mrs M’s Handmade needed LED light bulbs for our new booth lighting. I wanted a color temperature of 5000 degrees (“daylight”), so I chose a specific bulb … and I needed 12 of them. I elected to shop at home, pick up in the store so I could get the bulbs when the lights arrived. This is the first time I’ve done this shop online/pick up in-store with Home Depot.

What happened? The merchandise was exactly as ordered, and picked up within 30′ of the front entrance of this big box store (wow, that’s great!). The only negative was the clerk that processed the transaction didn’t see a need to bag the 12 light bulbs … she just handed me the display units with the 12 lights mounted on cards and stuck in slots, and thought she was done.

Well, OK, then. I guess she was.

What’s it all mean? No clue, but as of now, I don’t think anyone is getting online shopping right all of the time. And that’s a big frustration, because I’d really be OK if I never walked into another store again.