Buying without Seeing or Sampling

How many times have you ordered an item online without actually having seen it in person? What if it’s too big for your kitchen, doesn’t look good when you try it on, doesn’t fit or is a whole lot cheaper-looking in person? I am reminded of my first experience with such buying experience as a little boy when I succumbed to a children’s show selling Captain Video toys that included a special ring (plastic), a magical add-on for your TV to see stuff you needed this item for (it was a very cheap sheet of plastic you could use crayon on to trace what the host was indicating) and a space helmet (plastic so thin that it tore within 72 hours of purchase). But today, we have home shopping and on TV from QVC, HSN and the dozens of pseudo-charismatic infomercial hosts whose “must buy ads” – usually in increments of $19.95 (plus the notorious “shipping and handling”) – populate the airways.

For some, the venture to buying online is based on a suggestion of “only upscale” found on clothing sites like Ideeli, Rue La La, Hautelook, Blue Fly, etc., where the stuff is primarily from known brands and seems like nothing more than an outlet store on the Web. Liberal return policies help make the day. Size matters, but not as much as you would think! Just return it in the handy, prelabeled box. Retail/wholesale aggregators like Amazon also create an aura of trust in these often detached and distant transactions. It just so convenient!

FedEx and UPS are indeed grateful for the volume of deals, and the temptation of being able to comparison price-shop so easily and avoid sales tax (a sore spot that is wending its way through the courts and legislatures as states cry “foul” in recessionary times) is just too much for Americans who are still willing to shop, particularly when they know exactly what they want. Even when they are ready to buy large-ticket items, from appliances to cars, they are likely to know the real wholesale price of the item and all of the available options and features before they enter the showroom.

But buy or lease a car they haven’t seen or test driven? Yup, as the title of a New York Times piece (November 11^th) suggests: “For New-Car Buyers, Taking a Test Drive Now Seems So 1995 .” Folks are leasing cars online with increasing frequency: “It’s not nearly so simple to undo the sale of a car or a truck. So there were raised eyebrows at LeaseTrader.com, an online lease transfer service, when it discovered a significant increase in the number of people who closed a deal through its Web site without so much as sliding behind the steering wheel of their new vehicles… ‘We found the number of people who skipped the test drive more than doubled since 2007,’ John Sternal, a company spokesman, said.” NY Times. Less of a commitment when you lease, but then, you are still locking in for a number of years.

Given the amount of research a car-buyer can amass, it’s really not that surprising, and it is often the deal on a predetermined model that closes the transaction. For many, it’s just getting a newer model of what they already have and like. For others, it is only the deal that drives closure, but there is the underlying notion of trusting most car brands that are forced to comply with rigid federal requirements and lots of competitive market testing: “Improvements in the overall quality of new cars and trucks are likely to play a role, said George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, an industry consulting firm… ‘Based on the research we do for our annual Vehicle Satisfaction Awards, it’s fair to say there really aren’t any bad cars anymore,’ Mr. Peterson said. ‘I think consumers are picking up on that, so they feel more confident they’re making a good decision.’…

“Oren Weintraub, founder of a car-buying consultancy, Authority Auto, and a former sales manager at a large Southern California Ford dealership, says that when he negotiates a new lease or purchase on behalf of a client, he strongly recommends a test drive. Even so, he estimated, as many as a third of his customers just do not think it is that important.” NY Times. Okay, shopping fans, what is the biggest item you have ever purchased from a TV or online experience without having viewed or tested the product first? Come on! What?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the notion of how we live and shop today bears little resemblance to the practices of a decade or two ago.