A Rant about Online Shopping

So because I've made it my personal mission to bitch about everyone and everything in this world, I decided to write another opinion piece. I would like to quickly thank MajinTails, who pretty much helped me with this one.

The internet has not only made shopping more convenient because you can do it from your couch, but it has also made finding whatever you're looking for a reality. I remember in the pre internet days when if you were looking for something in particular that was out of print or a few years old, you would have to go to every store in your area. If you got lucky you at least found it used, but more likely your long search proved to be futile. When my family started buying things off the internet, it felt like our lives had gotten better. Living in a small town, we only had a single video store a few miles away, and it often didn't have anything more than a few years old. Our chances of recording a TV broadcast of whatever movie/TV show/special we wanted on tape was higher than finding it at our local Blockbuster.

As the years went on, online shopping became as shitty as it was helpful. In recent years, searching for things on shopping sites yield as much useless and unrelated junk as the average search engine does these days. If you go on certain sites and the thing you search for has more two words for example, you will either get one or the other, but  rarely both.

Even though I have never encountered one personally, the worst part of online shopping is scammers. I don't need to go on a long winded rant about these assholes, because I'm sure everyone reading this has the same opinion about them. They're assholes, and they deserve to be held down and forced to watch a marathon of the Twilight movies. Even though it is without a doubt the biggest problem with online shopping, I don't have much to say about it.

My second biggest gripe is with international shipping. Believe it or not, buying things from over seas is one of the positive aspects of buying things online. Unfortunately, even that has a negative turn, which in itself is a win-lose situation: China. On one hand, you can buy something dazzling for an unbelievably low price, but on the other hand you'll most likely have to wait up to five months for it to make it to your house. Waiting aside, there's a good chance that it turns out to be a case of "you get what you pay for", and the thing you ordered isn't worth the $1 you paid for it. Jewelry and clothing especially, because, even if you give the correct measurements, there's a good chance it won't fit you.

The language barrier also makes it hard to contact customer service. Additionally, I HIGHLY recommend not buying anything that is allegedly made of "fake" fur from China. I fell for this once. I bought a costume tail that was supposed to be made of fake fur, but I received one that was taken from a poor animal that was, no doubt, brutally murdered for it. It's also advisable that you don't buy anything name brand from China, because there are high odds that it is counterfeit. To those who refuse to listen to this, have fun wearing "Nikee" shoes, or playing on a "Nitteddo Wee" on that one month they last!

You can't avoid buying from China either. Not just because that's where products are made (some of which are high quality, might I add), but because sometimes sellers will claim they are shipping from the United States. Yeah, sure. It'll take 3 months for something that's supposedly being shipped from the next county over to arrive!

What makes the whole thing even worse is that you can't have listings from China discluded from your results either at all or without getting rid of every other country, including ones you trust. They should make an option that allows you to buy things from countries of your selection. I don't think I have to point this out, but no! I'm not xenophobic. In fact, most of my online purchases come from England and Italy, because those countries produce the finest suits, jewelry, neckties, and shirts. In fact, I think the fact that you can't include Europe in your location range is a tragedy.

Staying to true to the saying about there being depraved people on the internet, there are people who sell things for outrageous prices just because they're old, or because they saw someone else list the same thing at that price. I hate to break this to you, folks, but your Beatles records aren't necessarily going to fetch a lot of money just because it's old. Granted, there are Beatles records that do sell for high prices, but that's due to certain conditions such as rarity, condition, autographs, etc. It especially pisses me off when something is completely broken but selling for thousands of dollars BECUZ ITS OLD!. I don't care how old your broken CRT TV is, if it don't work and it's just the frame, it's not worth shit. Period.

A few years back a clickbait article circulated, promising people that they could sell their old Disney Black Diamond VHS tapes for millions of dollars. Literally. Millions of dollars for an old VHS tape. Anyone in the VHS collecting community can tell you that these tapes are actually worthless for anything besides nostalgia. In fact, they sell them at my local second hand store for around $5 a tape.

VHScollector.com has a very good article that tells us why these tapes aren't worth shit. Tragically, there is someone wants over $1,000,000 (ONE MILLION DOLLARS!) for a Beauty and the Beast Black Diamond tape. The listing has not been updated since March of 2020 (it's January 22, 2021 at the time this blog post is being written), and, obviously, no one is either insane or financially irresponsible enough to buy it. If you look at the Price+Shipping Highest to Lowest on eBay's VHS section, you will find a bunch of "rare" Black Diamond tapes before anything else, and in varying conditions. There have even been some stupid motherfuckers who claim that Black Diamond releases have deleted scenes and shit. Your IQ would have to be "potato" to believe this. In fact, I hope at least one of the dumbasses who wrote these articles was lying in a (also hopefully) failed attempt to sell useless junk.

What's even worse is that there are people who think any useless garbage they have lying around the house is worth a fortune. I know this sounds similar to what I just said, but in a way it's different because now I'm talking about when they even try to sell stuff for what would be a reasonable price if it weren't for the fact that it's garbage. I don't have much to say on this, but thought I would mention it anyway.

Then again, I suppose people having too much esteem for their items are better than the people who ruin things and sell them as crafts. There is always someone selling a modified version of something that could have netted a real profit instead of sitting on eBay forever. Vinyl records for example. People turn them into wall clocks (which sometimes includes cutting them up) or bowls. That's right, bowls. I don't know what you would put in a bowl made out of a dusty, old vinyl record, but whatever its use, I hope it's not intended for food. I'm pretty sure that 1956 Wizard of Oz LP would have been worth more money staying as vinyl record instead of a bowl, Karen. Video game, VHS, DVD, and record covers, as well as posters, are often cut up and turned into journal covers. There have been many video games that were taken out of their cartridges, and replaced with homebrew games. I heard that you can get blank carts, but I am talking about people who go the cheaper route by destroying their games and... yeah, not gonna repeat myself, you get the point.

Even since the beginning of online shopping people have Apparently people also think that getting an "official" grading on the condition of their video games makes them more valuable. I'm not a seller, so maybe I just don't understand why you can't save yourself money and inspect it yourself before selling.

Next on my to-bitch-about list are the people who make one listing for individual items. I'm not talking about like size and color, I'm talking about "PICK A DVD FROM THIS LISTING" bullshit. How about instead, you get off your ass and list each individual movie, instead of making me go through a list which will not doubt end with me finding out that you're sold out of what I was looking for? I think eBay charges a fee for each individual listing, or something, so it's probably these lazy, greedy fuckers' way of getting out of paying the oh-so expensive thirty-cent fee.

Don't get me started on the morons who sell things that are supposed to be together separately. For example, people selling each disk from a 3 DVD set individually. This is especially bullshit if you're buying a 2-or-more set of a cast recording. How about, just selling it all together? You wouldn't even have to change the price, just round them up. Unless you're one of those dumbasses who think they're worth like $50 each or some shit. Then you're just too stupid to even be alive.

Since day one I have hated "Free Local Pickup" bullshit, especially when you don't have the option of having the damn thing shipped to your house. I once saw a working phonograph with a box full of cylinders for only $200. I was about to buy it, but fortunately my habit of looking through a listing before purchasing stopped me when I saw that it was local pickup only. If I wanted this local pickup bullshit, I would have went on Craigslist. I mean at least Craigslist has hookers! (I'm joking everyone, I'm actually a straight lace). Craigslist itself is bullshit, because you're just ASKING to be kidnapped or murdered if you go to a stranger's house.

Buying video games online is an even yet ironic level of "one of the easiest things in the world" and "one of the most never racking things ever". As we mentioned, people think old = big bucks. People think that their barely-working half broken game cartridges with a label that's brown for reasons besides age. A working cartridge of say something like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Sonic the Hedgehog usually sells for a reasonable price around $25-50 and, just as reasonably, boxed/new condition copies sell for higher. It makes no sense for me to pay $300 for a game that looks like it's been dragged through Hell when I can pay $50 for a copy that actually works and looks good.

There are people who sell their saved games files, often for outrageous prices that match the game itself (I saw one for $150, not joking). There are actual websites that host saved game files, FOR FREE, making this an even more pointless endeavor. If a person is foolish enough to throw away money on something they can either do themselves (which would be more fun, anyway) or legally download for free, then I say let them drain their finances on unimportant things.

One of the worst parts of the online buying process is the final step: getting what you paid for delivered to you. I already mentioned long waits for shipping for imported items, and I might sound impatient by saying this, but it's still kind of bogus that I have to wait even for items that only take a few days to arrive. I think literally the only positive side of buying things in the store, besides being able to physically examine the item yourself before buying, is that you can get what you want faster. Another problem is you have to trust not only the seller to ship it, but also the delivery man and watch out for porch pirates. Considering all these things, I think buying warranties and shipping insurance is a blessing. It's always worth the extra money, and I would rather pay an extra $5-$25 instead of paying over $100 to replace the item in question, which may or may not be replaceable or cost more to buy another one.

I'm not a seller, but I have seen buyers that are entitled as fuck. In fact, I think there's an entire subreddit dedicated to screencapping people thinking that they're special and can get shit for free or at a lower price. I remember this screencap where this girl offered some guy nude photos in exchange for car he was selling. He pretty much called her a whore and laughed at her when she had a meltdown about how "desirable" she is and how much he's "missing out". Unfortunately, most encounters with these entitled buyers aren't funny. You'll get someone who thinks they're so special that you'll lower the price for them. When you don't, they explode on you. It's not my fault you want something more expensive than you can afford.

People like to play on other people's gullibility, and sell fraudulent things. "Haunted" objects, for example. People will make up wild stories about how the thing they're selling is "haunted" and have been allegedly fucking with them. Or they sell things like "Dirt from a Witch's grave", which anyone with common sense would not only know is a load of bunk, but also would easily come to the conclusion that it was just dirt from the person's back yard. Tails pointed out that someone was selling "Paranormal spiritual rocks", which I, someone who has never seen the listing, can already tell it's just a handful of rocks that the seller found along the highway.

I do know that actual magick items are for sell, and I'm not calling every supernatural thing for sell a load of bunk. I'm talking about stuff that is obvious fraud, that the seller just picked up somewhere.

Misinformation and fraud are serious matters. Besides the aforementioned possibility of whatever you're looking at being a scam, there's a slight chance the seller either forgets or "forgets" to mention any defects the item might have. Sometimes sellers give intentional misinformation to make their item sound more valuable than it actually is.

I'm not joking about this either. There was a person who was trying to sell an "autographed" Bible for an insane amount of money. I'm not sure if it was some kind of joke (as was one listing I saw where a person sold an axe for $1000, claiming it can fight against Zombies), or if the seller thought they were actually going to fool someone.

Sometimes sellers will claim an item is older than it actually is. Look up your favorite book, there'll be tons of "first editions" printed a hundred years after it's actual release. This is either due to guessing, sellers thinking their stuff is worth more than it is, or outright fraud. Sometimes sellers will even go so far as to claim something is working and that "Something must have happened during shipping". I will give them the benefit of the doubt, because there are some dishonest people who work for post offices that aren't careful with other people's property.

Another thing I hate is stock photos. These are helpful if they're honest, but if you're buying a book or something that has variations, you're best bet is to hope for a photograph. I once bought a copy of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. The stock photo was of an edition with the poster of Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical on the cover. I bought it, and when I received it, I was disappointed to find I bought an edition with an ugly ass cover that one would never expect had anything to do with Phantom. I have even seen people use the wrong stock photos before. I once saw a listing for The Simpsons Season 1 on DVD but the stock photo was of James Cameron's Avatar.

The rating system for products and sellers is another thing that has gone rotten over the years. Certain sites will claim a product has a perfect rating, but when you actually look at the reviews, they're all negative. I've seen a lot of stupid things on buyers' parts, too. They give things glowing reviews with nothing negative being mentioned, but will give the product only 3 or 4 stars. I once even saw someone say a product was great and gave it only one star.

Some sites let you choose your price range. Unfortunately, this does not include shipping, so if you're looking for something that's an even $50, you could end up paying $60.

I don't think I have anything else to say about online shopping, which is probably a good thing because this rant has gone on long enough.