All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line

gav on 2004-02-17T17:23:45

I've seen "Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line" by Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini linked to from quite a few places. I think he's full of crap. Not that I'm defending poor e-commerce companies, there are a lot out there that suck.

I started writing an explanation of why he's wrong, but after reading through my notes I find that I can simplify it to one bullet point:

  • Tog is full of crap

Ogg Say Tog Write Bad Crap

Ovid on 2004-02-17T17:36:25

Wow. That was a pretty awful article. Many of those items apply to meatspace shopping, too (bad promotions and insufficient information). Sheesh.

In descending order of importantce, here's my top ten list of why you shouldn't shop online.

  1. Security
  2. Security
  3. Security
  4. Security
  5. Security
  6. Security
  7. Security
  8. Security
  9. Security
  10. Security

Except for an oblique and confused reference, Tog missed the boat on security.

Re:Ogg Say Tog Write Bad Crap

gav on 2004-02-17T18:17:05

Security is one of my least concerns about shopping online. I don't think that it's any less secure to shop online than off.

Slashtog

nkuitse on 2004-02-17T21:10:19

+1 Insightful:
So why can’t I input my credit card number the way it appears on the card? Why do I have to suck the extra spaces out, making it all but impossible to re-scan it for errors? We’re talking three spaces here, three bytes. We’re talking a loop to scan for those characters that can be accomplished in couple of microseconds.

This is pet peeve #41 for me. Come on, can't anybody do $cc =~ s/\D+//g;?

-1 Contradictory:

First:
If you go into a bricks and mortar store, you have at least three sources of information: [...] 4. Bonus: An 800 number printed on the box, accessible on the spot with a cell phone.

Later:
American Express is apparently unaware that e-commerce is done with a computer, not a phone.

Huh?

Lame

pudge on 2004-02-18T00:13:59

That whole thing is pretty lame, but when he actually expected me to believe I can get more and better information in a store than online, I Just gave up reading. Online, I have access to -- almost every time -- the same printed information as in the store, including manuals, and salespeople are almost always wrong about something that I can find out online.

It's true that the online stores themselves don't often have all the information, but I can change web sites pretty easily. :)