e-Commerce Frustrations

Retail Technology

Shopping has become, sadly, a Thanksgiving tradition.  I used to ask at every Thanksgiving gathering, “Who wants to eat quickly and go to the Walmart Doorbuster Sale with me.”  Thankfully know one ever took me up on it.  I believe everyone knew I wasn’t at all serious.

This year Target made an announcement that they would not be open on Thanksgiving Day.  It might have been an altruistic move on their part.  My guess it was that less and less people have been showing up preferring to stay home and shop online.  Perhaps it was this along with a combination of giving their employees a day off in this tight labor market.

We had a Thanksgiving Day with a lot more free time than usual this year.  After a beautiful and bountiful Thanksgiving feast in the early afternoon, some football, and a short nap, we got online to make a few purchases for the holidays.  I went to the American Airlines site, AA.com,  to book some flights and my wife went to Talbots.com shop and buy some gifts.  My time on AA.com was moderately efficient and I was done with what I had to do in short order. 

My wife did not nearly fare as well.  She made several selections of sales items.  Upon proceeding to the checkout, she was informed that one or more of the items she selected were no longer available.  The website, however, spectacularly did not tell her which items.  Also, making matters all the more frustrating, the website noted under each of the four items that she had selected:  “In Stock.”  Refreshing the page did not help matters at all.  So, she started all over again and got… exactly the same result.  It was most frustrating.

She asked for my assistance.  As I came to understand the issue, I was a dumbfounded but only a bit. Many smaller e-commerce websites have similar issues in my experience.  I deleted one of the items and button to continue lit up again as active.  I clicked it and it brought me back to the same page with the same annoying message and everything showing “In Stock.”  What a horrible website.

Any e-commerce website that makes it hard or impossible for people to buy goods or services is by definition horrible in my book. 

Over the past few years, I have come to compare every other retail or e-commerce website to Amazon.   My conclusion?  Amazon is better than everyone else by a long shot.  Amazon is so intuitive and easy to use, it is incredibly easy and very reliable when it comes to e-shopping.  They rarely make an error which in my case is twice over the past 25 years. 

Even when I was on the American Airlines site, I tried to use a travel voucher.  The voucher was stored on their site mind you, but I could not apply it to my reservation.  I had to call the 800 number and have an agent help me, which she did quite effectively.

I buy Cross pens to pass out as gifts.  Up until this past year, I could never get an order to go through.  I would get to the checkout and then, kind of like my wife’s experience with Talbot’s, I would get into an endless loop of me entering my credit card, the site asking for it again, and me wondering if I was accumulating hundreds of dollars of duplicate charges.  I would call their 800 number, often the next day during business hours, and always get the same nice lady.  She could see me order just sitting there in limbo.  I would give her my credit card and the goods were headed my way.  I asked her if other people experience this same frustrating issue.  She said, “Now and then.”  I suspected most simply quit and shopped elsewhere. 

I had a very similar experience with Jos A Banks as well.  Their website was so obtuse that I rarely use it anymore.  Every time I used them, I would have to call the 800 number and finish my order with the help of a customer service agent.

Recently, I went to buy some oud strings from a well-known string manufacturer.  I had the same endless loop frustration at check-out.  I called their number and got one of the owners of the company.  He took my feedback to heart and was unaware of this problem.  They sent me the strings gratis which I appreciated.

I have never had to call Amazon for any reason.

I believe every executive team of companies with e-commerce websites should try to buy goods on their websites.  They should use a private email account and experience what the general public experiences.  I imagine these problems would get fixed very quickly.  Who would want customers, at the point of payment, not be able to complete the transaction?  I am guessing the executives at these smaller retailers are not taking e-commerce seriously enough.  I wonder if they would be shocked by the number and dollar amount of missed sales.

There is a reason Amazon is #1.