I’m a brick and mortar shopper. Even with my hi (now becoming more low) tech life, I like to do both. Part of the online shopping is that I like think things that were once niche or someone that needed a IRS Tax ID in order to purchase things. With the Web and the online world, things that were difficult to get were much easier to do. I’m no defender of “consumerization” since most “consumers” are stupid, they are casual users like technology for an example, and most consumer stuff is mostly focused on style and not on the substance. I get  crazy when people go to Staples and buy a laptop that won’t survive in 6 months, because it has pink casing with heavy glossy paint. Speaking of Staples, their office supplies seem to be “user friendly” (focused on style and again not on the substance) to the point where I try to get some of my office supplies via a catalog-based/web supplier.
Another issue is the decline of brick and mortar due to places like Amazon (which I have been a seldom shopper, but I don’t have to time to sit down and navigate through their offerings) and eBay. The brick and mortar shops could had averted the disaster if the sales clerks would’ve learned to be more competitive.
Best Buy’s customer relations have gone down the drain as the years went by. Best Buy has seen CompUSA and Circuit City bit the dust in the last 4 years. And Best Buy has gone more arrogant and cocky, as the ex-CEO got let go earlier this year for violation of ethics (i.e. weaseling out of potential, but alleged sex harassment case.) You go to the local Best Buy and you see the sales people dumbness right out of your eyes. They could be trained on a specific product, but they now don’t do much training. Also simple mistakes can be very costly. For one example they ring up a big ticket item and forget to ring up a $30 SD card with a purchase with a $700 DSLR camera, and luckily this case didn’t set off the alarms.
Amazon.com was around when Best Buy and Barnes & Noble went on a binge building spree of building large footprint (albeit leasing) in the mid 2000s during the “big box” boom to later find out that Amazon’s pricing were making these stores “showrooms” where someone will touch and feel the product and then go online to find a cheaper price.
These kinds of stupidity is what is bringing down many of big box stores. However, on the flip side (defending) these box stores could do better. They need to shout out that sites like Amazon and other e-tailers do not have free standard shipping. Office supply people have had a nice process of free shipping of any number or cost of orders. Amazon and others require you to have have a minimum and even that some other retailers offer free shipping only during the holidays
Given how pricey gas is, at least you aren’t paying overhead for companies like UPS.
Some people call the Internet a free world and use my state’s motto “Live Free or Die”. Well in this case you also get the customer service you pay for. The e-tailer world is not customer friendly if you have a problem with your order. In fact there aren’t that many customer service to begin with. Amazon doesn’t have a WATS number easily available and if you email you get essentially a systemic response because they only have a finite amount of people dealing with customer service. The humans are essentially using big software packages known as Customer Relationship Management or CRM, but that middle word is actually contradictory! They get so many emails, and to speed up the process, they do actually read your message, but they click on a few checkboxes and you get a reply that appears to be automated.
So lets say you got screwed on a purchase, and you want your money back or get properly credited, in a the real world (save myself using that mouthful of a phrase) , you would deal with humans and it only takes a few seconds to page a manager and then have the manager say “yea sure” press a few buttons to override and wola you got service!
In the virtual world with ordering via the cyber reatilers, its mostly mainframes,  robots and other automated processes that does the ordering, the processing and even getting the package into the box! If you got screwed on a wrong order, or got billed improperly or what, you then have to essentially submit a ticket with a short message on the customer service webpage and you get a response back you get a name you can’t pronounce, they’re probably robotic in the real world, and in the message – dare I say they are very systemic, and chances are you won’t get much help if you got screwed – when they say its the rule, it is the rule and no overrides whatsoever.
There is a time and a place for both cyber and offline purchases. Both are good, and both can be bad but in order to have competition, the online world needs to learn to build up their customer service, and the offline world needs to take a refresher on customer service, and build up their knowledge of their products. The packet-based world doesn’t have the warmth an presence of the offline world. It will never happen.
Sadly, there are many people who cut corners (and for right reasons for some) and unfortunately there are more and more people that only grew up in the online world, and to them brick and mortars are for their grandparents.
It is a shame to see many of these larger than life buildings just become vacant. And in this fragile economy its even worse. And the irony is people that go to these places are ones who were considered as socially inexperienced – but its really the “normal” people that have gone onto the virtual route.