Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

Before You Shop Til You Drop

by T.J. Lee

This holiday season retailers around the Internet are gearing up for a major gift buying frenzy. It's expected that $6 billion (US dollars) will be spent this year, nearly double what was spent last year online.

Are you feeling shopper confident with your credit card in one hand and your mouse in the other? Maybe not. It's scary to plunk down your credit card on a cyber countertop. Will you get double- billed (either by accident or by design)? Will the company actually ship the goods you are ordering?

There are some things you can do to ensure your cyber shopping goes smoothly when dealing with US companies. First stop is the Safe Shopping Org site put up by the American Bar Association. At this site you can bone up on the terminology and answers to common questions that cyber shoppers have about security, credit cards, terms, and the like.
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/225/tr.cgi?safeshopper

Next stop is the Shopping Safely Online page by the Better Business Bureau. This page has eight great online shopping tips that everyone who buys online should be aware of. You can also find out more about their BBBOnLine Reliability program and the sites that are entitled to display their reliability and privacy logos.
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/225/tr.cgi?shoponline

Armed with knowledge and smart online shopper tips, stop by TIME Digital's The 25 Best E-Commerce Sites page for a list of the best cyberstores, auction sites, shopping tools, guides, and gimmicks ever assembled.
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/225/tr.cgi?25best

Another major player in the consumer site survey game, Forrester, has a site called Power Rankings that gives you their top rated sites for brokerages, computer sales, apparel, books, music, toys, games, flowers, and general merchandise.
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/225/tr.cgi?forrester

And should things still go awry while trudging through the cyber- malls keep this URL handy. It's to the Computer Economics Internet Shopping Complaint Hotline page. Drop a dime on any eCommerce vendor that did not do right by you.
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/225/tr.cgi?hotline

Here's hoping you all have a great holiday season and even if the cgi/perl/order form gremlins cause your online shopping to be less gratifying than it should be, remember this... you did not have to cruise up and down a mall parking lot for 30 minutes trying to find a parking space in the same county as the store you wanted to go in.