The Horrors of (Traditional) Holiday Shopping

My wife had a goal to do all of her Christmas shopping online this year. With the exception of a few stocking stuffers, I think she achieved her goal. She was able to do all of her holiday shopping in just a few hours, while watching reruns of 'Lost' and drinking Diet Coke.

Every couple of days a UPS or FedEx guy would show up at our door with holiday gifts in hand. My wife didn't have any problems with shipping, or merchandise. Everything just worked. I was even able to push her a few of my affiliate links for some of her purchases, which put a little money back in our pocket.

My Offline Shopping Experience
Since my wife does all of the Christmas shopping, my only job was to buy a gift for her. Being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until December 23 to buy her gift. Big mistake!

I had already planned on getting her a digital camcorder for Christmas. However, because I waited until December 23, buying online wasn't an option. So I battled traffic and headed over to Best Buy.

When I arrived, the parking lot was completely full, so I decided to park across the street at the local Grocery store. As I entered Best Buy, it looked like people were standing in line waiting for tickets to a Rolling Stone concert. After navigating my way through the maze of people, I was finally able to reach the camcorder section.

Luckily, I already knew which camcorder I was going to buy her. So it was just a matter of tracking down a sales person who could pull the camera out of storage. After 15 minutes of trying to flag down some help, I finally was able to get the attention of a salesman.

While I was waiting for the salesman to return with the goods, I had to do battle with the store crowd. It felt like I had just entered a football game, and somebody handed me the ball. I got knocked, bumped, and heard the words 'excuse me' more times than I would like to remember.

After 15 minutes, the salesman returned with the camera. He could clearly see the pain in my eyes. He offered to take me to the 'secret cash register', where I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my afternoon waiting in line. I could finally see the finish line!

As he was running my debit card, he had a confused look on his face. He asked me to swipe it again. The confused expression on his face, changed to a disappointed one. "I'm sorry sir, but your card is declined." To which I responded: "WTF. Are you kidding me?" I knew I had more than enough money in my account to cover the charge.

After I stormed out of there, I called my bank. They verified that I had more than enough money in my account, and said they had no record of an attempted purchase from Best Buy. Having wasted the better part of an afternoon, I didn't have the time or patience to go back in and try and convince the salesman his credit card machine was broken. I figured I would go back early the next morning, and try and beat the crowd.

I went back to Best Buy early the next morning. To my delightful surprise the last minute shoppers weren't out in full force yet. I walked right in, picked up the camera, handed them my debit card, and checked out without any problems. I mentioned my problems from the previous day to the sales clerk, and she confirmed that they had system problems a day earlier.

So I walked out of there thinking my problems were over. I didn't realize that the Best Buy hangover was still in the mail... As I logged into my bank account this morning I saw that Best Buy had charged my debit card three times. Two of the charges were from December 23rd when they said my card was declined.

It looks like I'm going to have to make a third trip to Best Buy this afternoon to try and get this whole mess straightened out. I'm not looking forward to wasting another hour of my day explaining the situation to the Manager.

The Moral of this Story
It's experiences like these that are going to help drive the growth of online sales over the next several years. I just read on Marketing Vox that online sales are up 24-25% over last year. Expect that number to increase next year. As an affiliate there are two things to take away from this: 1) Earn commissions on your own holiday purchases (if allowed), and 2) Position your affiliate website to take advantage of this incredible trend in online sales growth.