USA TodayDecember 6, 2000
Last year's naughty e-tailers vow to be nice
By Olivia Barker, USA TODAY, e-Gift Guide Special Section

Santa got stuck in chimneys across the USA last year when Web merchants failed to deliver on many of their promises. So this season, e-tailers and gift givers are being smarter about shipping and shopping. Web retailers are refining sluggish order-tracking systems, beefing up servers, and expanding warehouse and distribution centers. Walmart.com, which last December acknowledged potential shipping delays, closed for several weeks this fall to clean up its site. Similarly, Gap.com shut down for a day in October.

This year the Federal Trade Commission slapped several sites, including Macys.com and Toysrus.com, with $1.5 million in fines for such 1999 holiday infractions as belated deliveries; last month the FTC said it would send letters to online retailers, warning against overly ambitious shipping promises.

Greg Melville, 30, a writer from Lake Placid, N.Y., bought 10 gifts online last year — all less than a week before Dec. 25. Most arrived late. "I thought it was good as a last-minute buying alternative," Melville says. "It was not."

He says he still has faith in e-commerce, but he has changed tactics. "If I'm going to (shop online), I have to do it early," Melville says. "And if I have to buy something last-minute, I'm going to have to go to 7-Eleven."

Doug Stroh, who has shopped online for years, sticks to larger, more reputable companies, particularly those with trustworthy real-world counterparts, such as Jcrew.com and Landsend.com. "They're really, really accommodating," says Stroh, 24, of Arlington, Va. And if he has to pay extra on the 21st to ensure delivery on the 23rd, he's confident that the system "works out fine."

Other shopping precautions:

• Look for the online equivalents of the Good Housekeeping Seal, consumer advocates say. The Better Business Bureau's virtual cop, BBBOnLine, stamps its Reliability Seal on sites demonstrating a commitment to reliable service. The venerable Good Housekeeping now affixes its seal to e-commerce sites. BizRate.com uses buyer feedback to assess the quality of 1,400 retail sites.
  

  WebAssured.com guarantees that its 8,000 online retailers meet its standards: If shoppers get burned, they get a $200 Lloyd's of London settlement per problematic transaction. Free software from WebAssured displays a site's report card as you shop; software from WhenU.com shows such data as taxes and contact numbers on 400 member sites.

• Make sure the seals are real. Steve Salter of BBBOnLine cautions that if a seal on a site is a "dead graphic" — if clicking on the image doesn't link to more information — the merchant probably isn't authorized to use it.
• Make sure you have the information you need before checkout — shipping fees, delivery timelines, and return policies and costs (some sites tack on a 15% "restocking" fee, for example). Also troublesome are sites that don't disclose whether items are in stock. Sites "post the price of the item itself," Salter says. "It's all the rest of it that tends to get a little murky." If you can't find a site's contact information, Salter says, try visiting Whois.net, which tells who registered a domain name.
• Pay with a credit card, not an ATM debit card. Unlike debit cards, credit cards don't automatically deduct cash from accounts. Visa's NextCard and credit cards from other major issuers have unveiled generous dispute policies, such as forgiving the $50 consumer liability allowed under federal law. American Express' Private Payments issues temporary online account numbers for each transaction; Discover has a similar system, Deskshop 2.0. "These are wonderful ideas," says Susan Grant of the National Consumers League.

[ back to top ]    [ other news ]