My recent online shopping experiences have helped reinforce this. Growing up in the mid-80′s I remember seeing Made in America and Buy American campaigns on packaging, commercials and seemed to be a pretty common slogan in stores, who were proud to sell American made products.  I don’t know when this trend stopped, but it is kind of a shame.  Just as shameful though, American companies are giving Americans a reason to shop with the Chinese.

Over the last two weeks I’ve made three purchases online, and in each case I shopped via Google Shopping and in one case, eBay.  The first item was spark plugs for my car.  I figured it would be good preventative maintenance to do them since I’ve owned my current car for nearly 10,000 miles and am not 100% when they were changed last.  I used the Internet to first research what the best ones would be, then checked my local auto parts store.  By local, I mean it’s barely a mile down the road and they stock nearly everything I could want.  Sure enough, they had them in stock and ready for pick-up, for $3.99 a piece.  Curiosity got the best of me and I checked the parts store that’s a few blocks from my work, again in stock, but slightly cheaper at $3.79 a piece.  Needing only four, it wouldn’t be a huge savings, but enough of one to warrant choosing one over another.  Since I didn’t need them right now, I opted to also search online stores.  To my amazement, dozens of options came up, most all of them much cheaper than local.  I ticked the box in Google’s advanced search for Free Shipping and new results were shown to me, and again ticked an option to let me sort by price, least expensive to most expensive.  A company I’ve never heard of offered them for $1.99 a piece, free shipping, a 50% savings over my local options.  After verifying that the ordering card was secure (look for https:// in the browser), I placed my order using a credit card.  Sidebar: never use a Debit card online, credit cards give added protection in cases of fraud.

A week and a half later my rear brakes started to make some noise and I determined it was time to replace the pads.  Again looking at my local options, they didn’t have a product I wanted, so I was forced to use the Internet, not a problem.  eBay tends to be a great place to get quality automotive products for cheap, and that’s where I ended up, finding a listing with a Buy-it-Now option, promptly paid and included a message to the seller that I would appreciate if they could ship them out the next day, being Monday, so I could replace them as soon as possible.  This was an American based business who also sold on eBay.

That same night I blew a headlight in my car, having aftermarket HID headlights meant once again, no local option would work.  I chose to buy from the company that makes my lights, who have a California mailing address.  This order was placed within an hour of the brake pads on Sunday night.

Monday morning I got an email from the headlight company saying my order was received and should be shipping soon.  It wasn’t a standard order confirmation email, much more personal, which I appreciated.  I wrote back and relayed that I was driving with one bulb out and would appreciate if they could get it in the mail sooner than later.  A few hours later I got shipping notification and a tracking number from DHL that my headlight bulbs were leaving Beijing, China.  No information about my brake pads was sent.

Tuesday it dawned on me that a week and a half had passed and my spark plugs weren’t yet here.  Notification finally came that a shipping label was generated for the brake pads, but they had not yet been picked up.

Wednesday comes and the tracking info for the headlights, coming from China, indicates they’ve already made it to the US and were three quarters the way across the country already, delivery was expected to be Thursday.  Wednesday after work my spark plugs were in my mailbox, just under two weeks after I ordered them.

Thursday comes and my brake pads are scheduled for delivery on Friday, but here’s the kicker.  They originated from less than 150 miles from my home.  Meanwhile, my headlights were delivered from half way around the world!

Now, I’m not 100% certain if the company I bought my headlights from is an American based business with a warehouse and shipping department in China, or a Chinese company with an American business front-end to handle the money.  Neither the headlights nor the brake pads had expedited shipping paid them, nor was it drastically inflated from what I’d expect to pay.

The company from which I bought my spark plugs on mailed them via USPS Priority Mail, which delivers in 2-3 days (6 days a week, unlike FedEx or UPS), so they clearly sat on my order for a few days.  The brake pads didn’t actually go out until late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, again meaning the company sat on my order for nearly 48 hours.  The headlight company in turn, had my item picked, packed and shipped within 8 hours.

This isn’t my first experience ordering items from China either.  In the past, most orders have arrived within 5-7 business days without a bloated shipping charge and in every single case, they’ve shipped the item within hours of it being placed.

Make no mistake, I love my country and I support it and the people who work and live here, however, when customer service is clearly lacking, I will seek out other sources.  If you run an American company that sells a product or service, you need to deliver the absolute best possible customer service along with a competitive price or your business is going to fail.  I chose to buy spark plugs from an unknown supplier because I didn’t have to actually drive to a store and saved 50% by doing so.  The 50% savings did however come at a near two week delivery time.  I chose to buy brake pads online because I didn’t like the brands available to me locally, the Internet helped enable that and as a result, I got the brand I wanted at a competitive price, but the time it took to actual pack and ship my order was unacceptable.  My intentions on buying light bulbs was, from what I thought was an American company (and still might be), that shipped me a product from China faster than anyone in the USA has.

Price is no longer the only consideration for shoppers.  Some, like myself, can wait for an item to be shipped if the savings are worth wild or the product is not available locally.  In these situations, the global marketplace is available, and repeat business a consumer gives will be based on the first impression.  That first impression, if it’s lackluster as was my case with two companies, means I won’t ever use them again.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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This is the most current chart from eBay’s fees for selling page.  This is only the final value fee, the insertion fee is of course more, but not terribly out of line.  If you watch your eBay messages, they often offer no-fee insertions about once every 3-5 weeks.  The final value fee doesn’t account for certain sales, like automobiles, or for fixed value buy-it-now auctions, nor does it include listing add-on’s like extra photos, gallery submission or featured items.

Paypal is fully integrated into eBay, and perhaps one of the smartest business decisions eBay made was to buy them.  The added time to mail a check and the risk of it bouncing, coupled with so many bogus wire-transfer scams has made Paypal the de facto standard for receiving payment for auctions on eBay.  There is of coarse, more fees! If you do under $3,000 in total payments received with Paypal monthly, you can expect to pay 2.9% + 30c per transaction.

If you listed an item during eBay’s no-fee to list time, and that item sold for $100 you could expect to net $91 after eBay fees.  Even if you padded your shipping costs a little, Paypal takes their cut from the total payment.  If you charged $6 to mail something, Paypal is taking 2.9% + 30c of $106, or another $3.37 gone in fees.  It works out to being nearly 10% in fees, and that’s assuming you got a free listing and didn’t pay for any additional photos or add-ons.  Worse, you still need to box the item and take it somewhere to be mailed, consuming time, gas and shipping supplies.

Many who would have normally sold on eBay are now turning to Craigslist to sell their goods, and for good reasons!  Craigslist is free for nearly everything you’d expect to sell, with some exceptions.  They will host four photos, again for free and even mask your email address.  The ads run for weeks, and you can always relist with them.  Most all transactions are done in person and in cold hard cash. Craigslist is also a far better choice to sell items that can’t easily be shipped, like furniture or lawn mowers, or for items that might need a second opinion on, like expensive watches and jewelery.

Craigslist does have some down-faults compared to eBay though.  Not everyone wants a stranger to come to their home.   Moreover, you’re targeted buyer will be much smaller compared to the global connections eBay finds, and some buyers may ask you to meet them half way if they are a good distance away, but interested.  Still, these downsides are all the price you pay for not having to pay all the fees to use eBay.

What eBay does have going for it that seems to be the exact opposite on Craigslist, is multiple people willing to pay, raise and keep raising your current offer.  eBay is an auction format, and you ultimately hope to attract several people with a moderate to low starting price so that they can bid against each other to get the item the highest value.  Craigslist seems to work the exact opposite.  It’s near common practice for buyers to offer sellers half of what they are asking for items.  Rude yes, but everyone wants a deal.  You need to be keen on what the current value of your item is and how quickly you need to sell it in order to get the highest value from Craigslist.  There is one important caveat here though, that eBay simply can’t offer.   Barter and trade is alive and well!  If you are looking to get rid of one thing and willing to trade for another, Craigslist is the place to make the swap happen.

As eBay continues to raise fees along with Paypal, and the USPS, UPS and FedEx carriers follow, local, person-to-person sales will continue to flourish.  Craigslist doesn’t appear to be in a position to cash in on the transactions being made, as that would require more administration and some sort of similar feedback program.  eBay was, and will continue to be a dominate force on the Internet for p2p commerce, but they may be pushing all their sellers away with the increasing fees without more and better services.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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An oppertunity came up to shoot a wedding in April with my good friend Alison and it would be the perfect time to finally wear these socks with a pair of dress pants and shirt, not my normal attire.  The fit was great and I had no problems getting my dress shoes on with them, they actually felt good to wear.  I say this because I’ve never worn wool socks and still have horrible memories of my Mom making me wear itchy wool sweaters as a kid.  The socks felt so good I’ve dedicated a whole article about my experience with them!

It was a perfect day for a wedding, low 70′s with no humidity, the ceremony was outside and the reception was inside, with a courtyard that guests could mingle before and after dinner.   The whole time I was working I couldn’t get over how good the socks actually felt; it had been more than a year since I last wore my dress shoes and I didn’t have the fondest memories of them, that night they didn’t bother me.

After six hours of shooting, my job was done and I headed home, looking forward to getting out of the monkey suit and relax, it was now after midnight.  I took my shoes off after getting in the door and to my surprise a hole half the size of a dime was staring back at my in my right sock, by the big toe.  This greatly disappointed me because my friend spent a good amount of money on socks and because I wore them one time.  Furthermore, the socks feature

a hand linked toe – a distinctive feature found only in the highest quality socks. Ordinary socks have an uncomfortable seam closing the sock’s toe. The hand linking process eliminates that seam by aligning the loops of the material at the toe and closing the sock with a single stitch for the ultimate in comfort and fit.

I set them aside, took a shower and went to bed.  Sunday afternoon I decided to write Oberon an email, letting them know how impressed I was with their socks, how great they felt but also how disappointing it was that after wearing them once they formed a hole in the toe.  Oberon makes one product, socks, currently they offer them in two colors, these short run socks are their business, so I wanted to let them know how I felt.

10:15 Monday morning, to my surprise, Chris from Oberon replied to my email.  A real person none the less, not a canned automated email message from customer service.  Chris thanked me for the kind words and apologized for the impression Oberon socks left on me.  He went on to explain they had a short run of socks that slipped through quality control but were slightly defective, causing the toes to come apart.  Because they were a gift, he couldn’t look up my customer information to see if my socks fell within the time frame this minor slip-up happened, but without question he offered to send me a replacement pair.  Additionally, Chris sent me a pair of blue and white ones as an apology.

My reply to Chris was enthusiastic, I really like when businesses, small and large, actually listen to their customers and take the time to help them with whatever they need.   Replying to my email within 24 hours is kind of a big deal, so needless to say I’m impressed.  Moreover, I wasn’t expected a handout, or even the second pair, which I thought was a great gesture on their part and proved they really stand behind their product.  I asked Chris if he wanted me to send my defective pair of socks in, or at the very least take photos, he said it wasn’t necessary and again thanked me for the business.

Thursday the replacement socks came, beautifully wrapped in paisley tissue paper.  I wore the black pair to shoot another wedding that weekend and had no issues with them, comfy as the previous pair I had worn.  The quality is there, I was just misfortunate enough to receive a bad pair.  Without question I’d recommend them to friends or buy them as gifts.

It’s rare for me to fully endorse a product or company, especially with how most businesses run their operations.  It seems too many have a great product with craptastic customer service or a customer service department that is hell bent on proving nothing is wrong and refuses to replace your faulty product because the business knows its crap to start with.  Oberon is neither, they make really high quality products, have an amazing customer support system and really strive to make their customers happy.  This is probably how they’ve managed to build their loyal fan base.

Learn more about Oberon Socks and buy them here.  Become a Facebook fan and follow them on Twitter for updates, including this design being released July 1st.  Support small independant businesses who make quality products and actually care about their customers.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients: MEAT AND LASERS.  MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

Equally amazing is that the prototype card’s reference to American Psycho!  This also appears to be 100% legit, here’s the meat masters running their 150 watt Co2 laser:

These scrumptious business cards are not ready for sale yet, but more photos, an explanation of the process and general info can be found on the Meat Cards website or by following them on Twitter @meatcards.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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What is surprising is that within this delectable den of carnal capitalism lies a coffee shop. Within the Hustler store there is a cafe where one doesn’t only have to fantasize about munching on carpet but also can literally munch on a delicious blueberry scone and chase it down with a freshly brewed coffee or even a double skim cappuccino.

“May i have a caramel macchiato to go with my double sided dildo please?” Thank you!!Similar articles that might also interest you:

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A Randomn3ss reader who’s been asked to be described as some guy they wouldn’t let in with limited edition Nike’s on was leaving the ultra exclusive club down under and noticed a digital projection on the side of the building. He and was astounded to see a larger than life image that showed a copyrighted image from iStockphoto across the middle! Thank goodness for cell phones with cameras in them, behold,

A quick search on iStockphoto brings up the photo, as seen here. The rights to use this photo would have been about $10, give or take today’s exchange rate, yet Fusion decided to steal the watermarked thumbnail instead. Now not only is there egg on their face, I’m sure they will be getting a phone call from some attorneys as well.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Bush gives banks carte blanche to run amok during his terms in office and then sticks the taxpayers with the bill.  Its like you are planning a reunion for a bunch of your highschool buddies when one friend who you aren’t particularly close with (but hes someones brother) says “don’t worry, i got the hook up at the club, we will be straight, i got us vip bottle service!”  You and your buddies get all excited, you take a limo to the joint and down copious amounts of redbull and vodka on your way there.  You pull up to the spot ready to do the damn thing, the line is wrapped around the block but you don’t worry, your friend has the hook up right?!   Sure enough you go to the front of the line and all of a sudden said friend turns and says “alright yo, let me get your credit card cuz they wont let us in!”  This really happened.  And thats what bush and all his cronies are attempting to do to us.

We will be stuck with the bill and left with a dead dollar whose worth will value my crusty toe nails and some lint in my pockets.  If we have learned anything its that short term solutions don’t work.  You don’t spend massive amounts of money to save money.  You pull yourself up by the bootstraps and dig in.  You get ready for the long hall and don’t trust doods who say they have the hook up for the vip bottle service (bush).Similar articles that might also interest you:

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See what each states minimum pay guidelines are, along with proposed increases at the U.S Department of Labor.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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As mentioned in the other article, I bought a French press travel mug made by a company called Planetary Design, but they have the mug I wanted listed as temporarily discontinued, so I bought one from Amazon, who only four left, and only in wasabi green (now sold out). Not exactly the color I would have preferred, but it was the mug I thought I wanted. Before I go on. I only bought from Amazon after I had emailed Planetary Design about the wide base mug and if or when it would come back in stock, two full business days later, no response. Ironicly, the mug I bought through Amazon is actually shipped by Liquid Planet, the store version of Planetary Design, as Amazon is a “front” for many businesses.

The mug arrived a few days after buying it, however there was a problem, it was only a mug, not a French press mug. It seems that I mis-read the description and assumed that it was a French press, because that is what the company slogan is, it was just a plain old mug. Mind you, a very nice one, but no French press. This is where my frustration started.

Looking at the Liquid Planet store site, I see that they sell replacement lids and plungers, great! I’ll just find the one that will work in my mug, pay the $5 plus $2 for shipping since it was my stupid mistake and start enjoying it. Then I realized that the wide base mug was not in the drop down menu, so I started to wonder if another one would work. Since more than a week had past since sending an email to Planetary Design to inquire about the mug and it was never replied to, I figured I would just call Liquid Planet directly and talk to a sales person, get my question answered, pay the $7 and move on. Wow, I was wrong.

First call was on the Tuesday that the mug arrived, I explained my situation to the sales person on the phone, told them that I bought a mug that I thought was a French press but clearly it wasn’t and it was my mistake, and I’d like to buy a new lid / plunger to turn it into a French press, but wasn’t sure which one to get, could he help? He said that I would need to speak with a product specialist and asked to put me on hold to see if one was available. They weren’t, so he took my name and number and told me they would be in touch soon. Around 5pm that day a woman called me back, I missed the call but listened to the message, in which she said she would try me again tomorrow. I thought that was odd, I was expecting to get a request to call her back and a direct extension. At 6pm I called and asked the person who answered to talk to the young woman who left me the message, they told me she was unavailable and took my name and number, again.

Wednesday, no call back by the time I went to lunch, so I figured that I’d be proactive and call her back, same story, she was unavailable and took my name and number, now the 3rd time. At 6pm I left work and started driving home, no missed calls, no messages on my cell, I called in once again only to be told she had left for the day. I explained my situation to the person on the other line, all I wanted was a simple answer and only one person there seemed to be able to give it to me. He apologized for not being able to help me and asked for my name and number. I got my first name out and he finished the last for me, followed by my phone number. Clearly they were starting to know who I was. Sadly, I actually wanted to buy something, I wasn’t calling to complain, ask for a refund or exchange, I just wanted to know what part I needed to purchase to make my mug work like a French press.

Thursday, most of my hope was gone for a resolution, when I saw a missed call on my cell phone around 4 in the afternoon – I had given up calling on my lunch break by this point. It was the woman who I was trying to reach, and again telling me she would call back shortly. I called back while leaving work at 6pm and she was unavailable. Fifteen minutes later I was home and just about to take the dog out for a walk when my cell rang, it was them! The woman apologized profusely for the missed connections, phone tag and overall lack of customer service I had experienced and was calling to tell me that there is a proper lid and plunger for my mug and they would be mailing it to me free of charge, just for the hassle. It arrived the following Monday. For the last week and a half I’ve been able to finally enjoy coffee made in a French press.

This was clearly an ordering error on my part, yet contacting the company to purchase more over the phone was a total hassle. The downside is, I really like the mug, it is very high quality and I will give a more in-depth review of it when the follow up article comes, I’m just really disappointed in the quality of customer service that Planet Liquid and Planetary Design have. To this day, I have still not received an email response to the inquiry I sent a month ago.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Woot originated as a hacker term for root (or administrative) access to a computer. However, with the term as coincides with the gamer term, “w00t”.

“w00t” was originally an truncated expression common among players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game for “Wow, loot!” Thus the term passed into the net-culture where it thrived in video game communities and lost its original meaning and is used simply as a term of excitement.

Most people just use the term as defined in the last line, a term of excitement.  Then comes one of the web based stores that kind of changed internet retailing, Woot.com.

If you want the actual information on the site, check out the Wikipedia entry, but a quick synopsis is, one item is sold per day, if it sells out, wait till tomorrow.  This was kind of a unique business model when it started and there have been dozens of copy-cat websites, none have been able to capture the fanatical fans that Woot has though.  Items being sold are usually that of a tech nature, although coffee makers and electric razors show up, but Woot is famous for two other sales pitches that they do on a regular basis.  The bag of crap is a $5 grab bag, most are unique, limited to three per purchase and a $5 shipping fee.  Rumors go in the forums that people have received everything from a few ink pens worth about 15 cents to a 42” plasma.  The bag of crap doesn’t come up nearly as much as it used to, but it almost always sells out in less than 3 minutes.  Ironically, the new items are listed on the site at midnight Texas time, where the company is based.  The other sales stunt that helped boost visibility is the Woot off, an all day sell out of random items.   There is no official word on how much of each item, but the Woot off will go for about 24 hours and is the only time the site deviates from the one item, one day business model.

Since no insight is given by the company as to what the next days item will be, or in the case of a Woot off, what the next item up will be, it keeps fans [customers] coming back daily, often times more than daily.  This unique business model leads to thousands of comments on each item and an above average chatter in the forums where fans discuss current and past items.

With this in mind, and the Web 2.0 bubble growing, it wasn’t long before the Texas based company was prone to getting a phone call from a major corporation about buying them.  Sure as shit, it happened this week when Woot announced a partnership with Yahoo.  Yahoo has been struggling to figure out exactly what the fuck they bring to the customer experience on the internet for years, in my opinion at least.  Their front page is so cluttered, their email is prone to spam and their failed attempt at an auction site are in my eyes, just a way to try to be too big.  If they would focus on just a few core offerings and be really good at them, they may have not been over-run by Google, who was much slower and methodical with how they released new services and offerings to their users.

All that, and now they will be trying to do the one product, one day business model with the help of Woot.

Ironically enough, the new service is poised to be called Sellout.Woot.  In typical Woot humor and satire, they have explained what is going on, sort of, in a recent blog posting on their site, Woot sells out.  While I’ve still never purchased anything from Woot, I have enjoyed watching the site from time to time and if you need to kill 10 minutes, reading the comments on any given day should be enough to get a chuckle out of ya and keep you entertained.  I’m only hoping this doesn’t change as Yahoo looks over their shoulders.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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