online shopping - eBay, Walmart, Jet and more

Shopping online can be a good way to save money or increase the range of diversity in available products and brands. The drawback is the inability to see up close and touch, smell, hear the product.
A lot can be learned from such encounters.
   I order online regularly from places such as eBay, Walmart, Jet and others. Walmart and Jet have some of the best online values in groceries. Needless to say, fresh foods such as meat, fruits and vegetables and dairy products are not shippable and therefore not available online. However, anything in a bag, box, or bottle or can is usually available. One reason I've started to look around for something better is Walmart's shipping practices are, frankly, unacceptable. At first, everything was fine, then as time passed, more and more products were unavailable online, specifically, name brand soda pop. You know the ones, the big two, P and C.
   Then things worsened when the packing devolved. At one time, Walmart used inflated plastic pillows to pack items susceptible to damage, such as potato chips. Items of similar frgility were packed in the same box, Canned goods were packed in separate boxes. This worked well. Then the plastic pillows disappeared and were replaced by yardafter yard after yard of brown wrapping paper.
   Then the care that was taken to keep fragile items separate from canned and other hard goods disappeared. Heavy cans of soup or beans crushed boxes of crackers or worse, bags of potato chips.
   When I thought things could not get much worse, the quality of the people doing the packing dropped.
   Some of the higher end potato chips come in heavy duty bags and filled with air. This protects the consumer from damage to the product by careless bag boys/girls, stockers and other hazards. I began to notice all the higher end chip bags were deflated and the chips crushed. Anfd this in a box with no obvious hazards to damage the product. Apparently, Walmart had gotten so cheap, they were hiring people with destructive tendencies who would vandalize the chips, or were, perhaps, for some other reason, deflating the bags.
    Now, the best way to order is divide the order up into $50 lots, separating the fragile from the heavy and hard, yourself. One order will contain fragile products, another will contain canned products, and yet another will contain plastic bottled goods. This wont stop chip bags from being crushed, but will improve the product delivery.
   I ran across jet.com while looking for an improvement over Walmart. They were ideal. Many of their product prices were lower. The prices lowered even while you were adding more items to your order. Where Walmart no longer sold the name beran soda pops, Jet did and does, though as I will explain, the situation is changing.
   All the virtues I had found when I first began shopping online at Walmart, I now found at Jet, plus some. Unfortunately, a few months after I found them, so did Walmart, and bought Jet.
   Guess what happened, and is happening. The degeneration in packing practice is occurring at Jet. I mentioned this the first time I emailed a complaint over a damaged product. The responder informed me Jet was still an independent company and would remain so. My guess is, Walmart did a makeover on Jet's shipping department and the degradation taking place is the result.
   Jet is still a better place to shop. Customer service is quite good. Much better than Walmart. In a national survey of grocery outlets, done by Consumer Reports Magazine (remember Ralph Nader boomers?), Walmart was absolutely the worst at customer service. In fact, nobody came close.
   I have always been politely, refunded, in a friendly manner,  for damaged goods, albeit, an occurance that takes place with every  order now.
   Amazon sells $29.95 cases of soda pop that can be had at your local market for $4.95. The same can be said of eBay.
   eBay can be a source of good deals too. Much care has to be taken in approaching that marketplace though. Readin pages like a lawyer reading a contract is the best advice. Insist on buying from highly rated "Top Seller"'s. Buy only when the seller accepts returns or eBay's money back guarantee applies. Don't hesitate to email the seller with questions about the item. Be polite, but insistent on getting the facts you need know. Don't be mislead by advertising headlines. Read between the lines. Don't assume anything. Many, if not most sellers, are honest people into selling items from their homes, they no longer need. Some make extra money selling buys from a local thrift (junk) store.
Some sellers have a very large inventory and make a living on eBay. Some large companies have an eBay site.
   Then there's the dark side. People who are difficult to communicate with if they communicate at all. Some will not. Products that arrive damaged, or are the wrong item. Some people are intentionally trying to rip people off. Some make genuine mistakes. Beware of sellers with low sales rates. A person who's sold 48,000 items is more likely to respond to your issues than someone who has sold only one. A person with a low sale rate may be selling bad product long enough to make money and disappear only to open again under another name. Yet others will have an item you want at what seems like a reasonable price, but inflate the shipping rate to get more money. Look at shipping rates for the same product from different sellers and try to determine whether the charge is excessive.
   Do comparison shopping for the best value. Not just on eBay, but local brick and mortar shops, or other online sources.
   Auctions are a good way to get a good deal but caution is needed. More than once, I've watched as a bidding frenzy raised the item price beyond reasonable amounts. Watch an auction and search for the same item at a lower price in a different auction or as a "Buy Now" deal. A lot of good deals are had outside of the auction environment.
   The best approach is to watch and learn over time. One strategy that may work in one situation may not work in another.
   Be familiar with the product return process. A printer can come in handy, as can a knowledge of the post office's resources at your disposal. Their "Flat Rate" shipping is a good approach for occasional shippers. Generally, the post office is less expensive than FedEx or UPS. Tracking is a good way to reassure a buyer or a seller expecting a return, their item is on its way.