HIGHLAND PARK, Illinois, July 18 -- E-commerce is supposed to be the Next Really Big Thing, and I don't doubt that it will be the Next Really Big Thing. On-line sales of books, records, airline tickets, casual clothes, sports equipment, and even things like motorcycle parts are starting to take over a measurable portion of overall sales of those items. Car dealers, brick-and-mortar book and record stores, retailers, and even banks and real-estate agents are going to find, over the next few years, that their walk-in business isn't what it used to be; more and more consumers will be going to the Web when they want to do business.
You'll notice I say, "will be." There are a few e-commerce vendors that are making money, and there are others that aren't but that could be, if they were focused on a narrow, specialized area of business. The problem, however, is that e-commerce companies haven't yet realized that if they want to take a significant chunk of business away from traditional retailers, they'll have to serve their customers with the same flexibility, speed, and reliability that customers expect from their conventional mail- and phone-order counterparts.
Since I believe that eventually, e-commerce is, in fact, going to be the Next Really Big Thing, I've been trying to support it as much as I can. When I want to buy something, if there's a choice between the Old Way and the Web Way, I try the latter whenever possible. But I've had decidedly mixed results.
Sort-of free movie with your order -- whether you want it or not
Let's start a success story or two. I buy a lot of books from Amazon.com, and besides new books, I've found that they're pretty good at digging up used and out-of-print books at decent prices. They ship most books within a few days of the time I place my order, and their prices are low. And they've never messed up an order. I've also had good results with CDNow and CD Universe, and with BigStar.com (a video store).
BigStar had a video of Bruckner's 8th Symphony, conducted by Sergiu Celibidache, which I'd been having trouble finding -- however, they also sent me a "free" copy of Armageddon, a film I didn't want, and made me pay for shipping. (When I placed my order, I tried to find a way to say, "No, don't send me Armageddon, even for free; I'm not interested." But there was no apparent way to do so. I guess they had a bunch of extra tapes they were trying to get rid of that week, or something.)
Because of a bug in the software, I got charged twice, and they sent me two copies of the product.
I've ordered a couple of motorcycle parts on-line -- a battery and a tire (which, as it turned out, I wasn't able to mount myself and had to go to a dealer, hat in hand, and ask him to mount it for me; that episode reminded me why I normally buy my tires from the dealer and have them installed there). I bought these from Motorcycle Accessory Warehouse, who shipped them within a few days of the time I placed my order. I've also bought a couple of helmets from them -- again, they were shipped promptly.
I bought some golf practice aids from Dave Pelz's short-game store. They came within a week or two of the time I placed my order. (If I used them more often, they might even help my golf game!)
Last month, I ordered a pair of tickets for a concert at the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony. I ordered them about a month and a half in advance of the concert, and it's a good thing I did, because they took over three weeks to arrive. That's not too bad, but when I've ordered tickets by phone, they've usually come within a few days -- a week at the most.
We can make gold disappear!
I've had some bad experiences in e-commerce land, too. I ordered a gold ring as a Christmas present for Meg in 1997 -- I don't remember the vendor I ordered it from, but it never came. OK, so that was 1997, which was eons ago, in Internet Time. But still, that didn't help establish my confidence in the Web as a reliable way of buying things.
H&B Direct, a classical CD vendor, lost an order I placed back in April. Several weeks went by, and I wrote back to them to ask about the status of my order -- I included the order confirmation number they'd sent me when I placed my order. Their customer service guy wrote back to say, "I am terribly sorry, but it appears that your order did not go through. I have entered it into the computer just now, and you should be receiving your CD in two to three weeks." Well, that was on June 7th. It's now July 18th, and I still haven't received the CD. If I don't get it soon, they've probably lost a customer.
A few months ago, I ordered a copy of Symantec's pcANYWHERE, a program that allows you to control a PC remotely, from another PC. I wanted this product because I'm my parents' one-man customer support department -- it's sometimes hard to help them with their computer problems over the phone, because I can't tell exactly what they're doing or what the problem is. But pcANYWHERE lets you "log in" to the remote machine and run it just as if it were sitting in front of you.
Unfortunately, because of a bug in the software at Symantec's Web site, when I filled in the order form and clicked "Submit," I got an error message that said, "Your order was not processed. Hit the BACK button and submit again." Well, I did as instructed -- only to get two confirmation e-mails, with different confirmation numbers, indicating that my first order had been processed after all, despite what the error message said. I got charged twice, and they sent me two copies of the software. To their credit, Symantec was apologetic and refunded the second charge when I sent them an e-mail explaining what had happened.
Until Web companies provide the same level of service that old-fashioned vendors provide through their 800 numbers, the e-commerce boom won't boom.
With magazine subscriptions, I've had decent results -- I ordered a subscription to Maclean's (a Canadian news magazine) last summer, and the first issue arrived within a few weeks. However, when I took out a subscription to Bowling Digest through a Web site that sells several hundred sports magazines, it took about four months before I saw an issue. BD only comes out six times a year, so it's possible that part of that delay was just bad timing -- if my order went through the day after an issue came out, it would have been two months before I'd see a magazine anyway.
I feel that, being in the Web business (sort of, anyway -- kafalas.com does customer support for a couple of ZDNet's Web sites) I should put my money where my mouth is and do things the Web way instead of the Old Way wherever possible. So I'm still doing it, despite the mixed results I've had so far. But I can't help wondering if the average Web consumer is likely to have this much faith, or stubbornness, and keep ordering things through the Web when they could get the same products faster and more reliably through an 800 number or an old-fashioned mail-order catalog.
Until e-commerce companies get serious and realize that they have to provide the same level of service to their Web customers that old-fashioned vendors provide over the phone, the much-overhyped e-commerce boom won't boom.
But I'm going to tough it out. I ordered a new pair of bowling shoes last week, from Bowling Shoe Depot, an outfit recommended to me by a guy on the alt.sport.bowling newsgroup. I'll let you know when they come in!
[P.S. The shoes arrived the day after I posted my column -- one week after I ordered them. Maybe things are looking up for e-commerce after all!]
Copyright © 1999 John J. Kafalas