Jet.com developments

   Every month I make part of my grocery purchases online. My most used is Jet.com, a recently acquired property of Walmart, aka 'Wally World'.
   Since I started shopping there, Walmart bought the shop and made some modifications. None of them good for the consumer. The packaging has become inferior. Online catalog advertisement quality has been showing signs of problems. Last week, I ran across an add that had an image for a product, different than the item featured in the text. An accident, I'm sure. Today I was browsing garbage bags and ran across an ad for one of those generic, economy bags always to be found. The problem was, the dimensions of the bag were incorrect. I did a search online for the product and discovered more, ,not only were the dimensions wrong, the thickness of the plastic was only 0.7mil. That's probably fine for leaf bags in Autumn, but for kitchen waste, 3.0mil is what I consider a minimum.
   I will keep shopping Jet as long as the shipping, ads, and product quality stay above a minimum acceptable level. I hope they do. I like Jet and its representatives. Compared to Wally World, they're 'peachy keen.'

   A note about eBay. If you're not into investigating the product and using Google's search engine, shopping eBay may not be for you. They make some effort to regulate the site, but there are thousands of sellers there. As an analogy, if you're not comfortable in a marketplace with a wide variety of products and characters, and uncomfortable doing business in that environment, you won't like eBay.

1.Look for eBay's Money Back Guarantee
2.Stick with highly rated sellers.
3.Sellers who've sold thousands of items.
4.Sellers who have a returns policy.
5.Sellers with few negative ratings ( some people will give you negative rating without hesitation).
6.Sellers who supply adequate information and informative images of their items.
7.Do your research.
8.Know something about the item and its typical market value.
   The item may be cheaper offline, or elsewhere online, e.g. Jet or Walmart.


These are not hard and fast rules, by any means. You can do well without one or more, but understand the possible consequences before you do. Be prepared to communicate. Understand eBay's return system. Understand the Feedback system and how to do Follow Up feedback. Understand the feedback system is not a quality judgement system, but more like a fan rating system.
   Why do I say this? In my mind, a negative experience is one in which the transaction is less than smooth. A neutral experience, is for me, one which goes as expected, as planned. No pluses, no negatives. Hum drum. Yawn.
   A positive experience is when a glitch occurs but is dealt with promptly, politely and efficiently.
That and anything more. Some sellers go above and beyond the call, so to speak.
   A negative experience is one in which the item has to be sent back or the seller communicates badly or not at all. Not uncommon when dealing with foreign sellers. I make adjustments for people not fluent in English. Bad attitudes are negative.
   This is not how the eBay rating system works. The grading seems to be: neutral is positive, negative is neutral, and something really horrible has to happen to be considered negative. I've given two negatives out of the six hundred plus purchases I've made on eBay.
   Generally, an unresolved issue is a negative experience. Everything else is neutral or positive. Neutral is generally, considered a negative rating. Funny, I thought neutral meant 'zero', as in +, 0, - (positive, neutral, negative), not unlike a 'C' grade in school. Apparently, a "C" is considered a "D".
I understand the system. I remember becoming an overachiever in tech school. Anything less than an "A" was unacceptable. The very least had to be a "B".
   I'm not sure of the appropriateness of that grading system in any environment. I wouldn't impose that system on anyone but myself. Apologies to Linda.
   That's the post.