Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, January 6, 2000. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM US Eastern Time (GMT -5) every Thursday.
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Richard Seltzer (Home Page)
Bob Zwick, Bob@CottageMicro.Com (Home Page)
Richard Seltzer -- All -- it's time to start. As you connect, please introduce yourselves and let us know your interests. Our main topic for today is online shopping -- sharing what we learned over the holiday season. I'd be particularly interested: 1) what are the best online stores in terms of overall service? 2) what glitches did you encounter and where? what can be improved?
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Fred. Please introduce yourself and let us know your interests and tell us about your online shopping experiences.
Ron Rothenberg -- outpost.com?
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Ron. How are things going? Actually Outpost is next on my list, then Blue Fly, then eTown, 1-800-FLOWERS, and CDNow. Can you think of any others that need to be included?
Ron Rothenberg -- Rule 1: make sure you can guarantee delivery by Christmas!!!
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I was fortunate with regard to delivery (Amazon in particular was great). Did you run into problems delivery-wise?
Ron Rothenberg -- no, i didn't, but many people did - and it was big news the week before christmas. I think that dampened what could have been a big end to the season.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I saw those reports too and thought they were just reporters who had nothing else to write about. It's certainly ridiculous to write stories about non-delivery THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS. If those stories had come out the week after, I'd have been more inclined to believe them. As for me, I bought everything online (far too much :-), and it all arrived very very promptly.
Ron Rothenberg -- yes, attorneys-generals and consumer reporters were trumpeting it all over the airwaves.
Ron Rothenberg Xmas orders trailed off about the 15th or 16th -- mostly because people don't really expect their auction goods to be delivered too swiftly.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- Expectations probably had a lot to do with the overall sales pictures. People just didn't know what to expect in terms of delivery and other aspects of service, and hence were very vulnerable to media-fostered rumors. As for auctions -- I'm surprised that eBay or Amazon didn't set up a special Christmas-related service: e.g., certify their best sellers for quick delivery, with some kind of guarantee behind it. It doesn't seem right that sales should tail off at the very time when the holiday shopping frenzy is taking off.
Bob Fleischer -- I think there was at least one site that had same-day Christmas day delivery in certain cities.
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Bob, do you recall what that site was? I know that some stores that sell electronics/computer-related products normally deliver next-day.
Bob Fleischer -- I don't remember the name, it was a news item on some news site that stated this in the teaser -- I didn't even read it! Probably boston.com or cnn
Bob Fleischer -- I suspect, but do not know for a fact, that giftworld.com was one of the sites offering delivery on Christmas of orders placed on Christmas in selected cities -- since that is their offer in general.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- Thanks for the pointer to giftworld. I'll take a look.
Ron Rothenberg -- outpost.com touted delivery right until 12/23
Richard Seltzer -- Next year, I'd like to see an emphasis on the old 12 days of Christmas. If the season were spread out a bit, rather than being a one-day big bang, that would even out the pressure on service and delivery (both in physical stores and online). Prices could even be set based on delivery time. Or you could place an order and name the day that you want each item to arrive -- sending someone a gift a day for twelve days could be a very special touch. Of course, it's hard to change habits and tradition. But I believe many would benefit.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- Yes, the US Postal Service did a great job. They were handling "standard" shipping for Amazon, which is supposed to mean 3-5 days (Priority Mail). And I received almost all my Amazon shipments the morning after Amazon shipped them -- the mail man would arrive at 7 AM in a truck the Postal Service had rented from Sears for the holiday season. But, yes, they don't seem to have advertised or publicized what they were doing. Bizarre.
Ron Rothenberg -- Amazon says 3-5 days to be safe, but the actual standard for priority mail is 2-3 days (not business days, actual days), and 95%+ is delivered in two days. People still have the expectation that it is much slower. The postal service gives them those nice boxes for free, too.
Richard Seltzer -- I'd think it would be in the best interest of online stores and the shippers (especially the US Postal Service) to provide better information about delivery times. It's one thing to set expectations conservatively. But if you have 95% deliveries in 2-3 days (and expect over Christmas the average for the US Postal Service was better than that), they should advertise the stats.
Ron Rothenberg -- Yes, USPS is getting bolder about that -- they are now having their deliveries audited by Price Waterhouse, probably just for that reason. but expectations are very slow to change. I had people who on Dec. 1, would say, "please get it in the mail right away, since I know the postal service is slow this time of year, and I need it in time for xmas."
Richard Seltzer -- Ron, how about your auction sales business? Did you face any special challenges over the holidays? Was there much Christmas buying at eBay? Or do auction sales take too much lead time for last-minute shoppers (and most of the world, I believe, are last-minute shoppers).
Richard Seltzer -- By the way, Amazon also was terrific regarding shipment. I would sign up for consolidated shipments -- a dozen or two items to be sent together to save on shipping cost -- and they repeatedly broke the shipments up, sending items in smaller lots as soon as they became available, without charging any extra. They, too, don't seem to have mentioned, marketed this great service.
Ron Rothenberg -- yes, an article on "how to compare the cost of buying online with the cost of buying locally, especially when you can't find out the cost of shipping until you're almost done buying." yes, very often the information an online shopper wants and needs the most is the information that the site makes hardest to get. that is not good. it annoys people and leaves them feeling they had a bad experience.
Bob Fleischer -- I have often hear that retailers consider availability information to be very sensitive.
Ron Rothenberg -- yes, bob, but that is the information that people usually most want, "will it cost me less to buy it on line than to buy it at the local store?"
Richard Seltzer -- Yes, Ron, that lack of info about the cost of shipping is a serious barrier. One electronics store I bought from never indicated the shipping cost. Their delivery was great -- next morning on items ordered before midnight. But you only saw the shipping cost when the package arrived. Buy.com is particular bad about shipping cost -- at least in my experience. They seem to manipulate their sales prices to rank high with the shopping bots, and then the shipping cost (which you don't see until you're placing the order) is all over the place -- differing widely for same size items with the same weight, seeming to make up for the discounted price. (At least that's what it looked like from here. It would take some professional investigation to nail that one down.)
Ron Rothenberg -- www.outpost.com offers the actual price, including shipping. I prefer that, even if it costs me more, it saves me time trying to figure it out.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- Properly publicized availability info can be a great marketing tool. eToys shows you right with your search results the availability of every item. And if something is out of stock, it's easy to sign up to get an email alert as soon as it becomes available. Over the holidays it would actually make good sense to highlight the hottest items on the home page -- both what's in stock and what isn't (with an indication of expected availability date.) If it were me, I'd set up a specical gift service -- for the items that are absolutely impossible to get by Christmas day, on request, send a gift wrapped box with a letter from Santa saying when the item itself will arrive.
Ron Rothenberg -- there is a shopping bot now that factors in shipping costs.
Richard Seltzer -- For me, availability is often far more important than total cost at Christmas time. Other times of the year, when I'm not in such a hurry, I'd lean more toward total cost. Also, at Christmas, some gifts are for delivery in person and others are for shipment to a distant friend or relative. It is extremely convenient as well as cost effective to have the online store send the gift-wrapped present direct to the gift recipient. I also like the gift-certificate approach of Amazon and a number of other stores -- as late as Christmas morning, you could have a gift-certificate delivered by email anywhere in the world.
Richard Seltzer -- All -- time is up already. Thanks very much for joining
us this week. As usual, I'll post the edited transcript in a few days.
Check www.samizdat.com/chat.html. Please join us next week, when our guest
will be Bob Supnik, former VP of Research at Digital, and now a VP at FairMarket.com,
the site that hosts branded person-to-person auctions.
Previous transcripts and schedule of upcoming chats -- www.samizdat.com/chat.html
To connect to the chat room, go to www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html
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