Shopping on line is far from perfect. Clothes and shoes often don’t fit and have to be returned. There are thieves who follow the UPS truck around and steal the packages a few minutes after they are dropped off. We buy books online from Amazon but not much else.
Out here there is a much bigger threat of having your vehicle broken into while shopping in a mall than having your on line delivery stuff stolen. At least once a week in the Gay Bay area a shopper gets the crap beaten out of them in a mall parking lot, gets robbed and their vehicle stolen. So far I have not been robbed nor mugged when picking up my on line order delivered to my front porch.
My wife has been a Talbot shopper since we got married over 50 years ago. They closed our local Talbots about 5 years ago, and she now buys on line. She has never had to return a Talbot purchase and gets free delivery. Their sizes are true sizes. They send a postage paid return mailer with each purchase she makes.
I and many of my younger relatives fish and hunt or kayak. For the most part, we buy our products on sale with free delivery from Cabelas or Bass Pro Shops. Better selection, fast delivery and great prices. Usually, we know more about the products than anyone working in the stores.
3 years ago we bought an expensive 2 person kayak from a so called great dealer. Their concept of service was to remove the plastic shrink wrap and put a roof rack on my pickup that didn’t work. I had to adjust a relign the steering mechanism and other working systems on the yak as there was no adjustments after the shrink wrap was removed. I returned the racks and bought a trailer for the yak. The trailer hitch came off the trailer on the way home and fortunately, I was able to pull over before the safety chain came loose.
Since then I have bought two more yaks on line, one from Cabelas and from an personal online guy. I got discounts/free delivery and did the minor adjustments myself after learning how on line. The adjustments were minor compared to our first yak.
Unfortunately, most of the sales clerks out here have zero product knowledge and they have memorized the assine saying, “No problem”, when you ask for something specific instead of the standard size that fits everyone but you.
On a positive note re an excellent local store. I recently had major foot surgery and got a gift certificate from younger relatives for a proper walking shoe fitting at the local running and walking store. The young sales lady at the store, took about an hour to find my new proper fit for walking shoes to even to ordering special laces for my walking shoes. No way I could get that precise of a shoe fit on line. My future walking shoes will be bought there. We recommend this store about once a week to walkers and the few runners we know.
In the spring/summer/winter, we buy most of our fresh produce from three locals, who raise their products right there and harvest it each morning. After they close down we get good produce from Walmart and our local Safeway.
We have a local sea food monger and a great local butcher shop for special occasions. We shop the seafood specials at Costco and Safeway and get our regular meat/chicken from them and or Walmart.