To shop, or not to shop...that is the question

 I feel as if the pandemic made us all internet shoppers when many of us had never bought anything online before.

Groceries, clothes, everything from toothpaste to shoes.

I never shopped online prior to being locked down in 2020-21. I found it not only daunting, but was always worried about cybertheft of my credit cards. Of course, the pandemic changed that. When you can't go out to a grocery store to purchase groceries, you have to get them from somewhere. The obvious answer is...online.

The theme for this month's blog post is your best or worst shopping experience, ever. I'm lucky enough to say I've never had a bad shopping experience. The law of averages states I should have had at least one by this advanced age, but...nope.

The best experience I had was, surprisingly, with an online purchase.

My daughter was getting married during the height of Covid and there was no way I could shop in a real store. My immune system on the best of my days is lousy, so precautions were not being thrown to the wind. I found a dress from an obscure company online. I say obscure because I'd never heard of them. I sent my measurements and was told the dress would ship in 3-4 weeks. No worries, since the wedding was 3 months away.

3 weeks went by, then 4, then 5...6... and I got worried. I emailed the company several times but always got the standard response of thank you for the email. Someone will be back to you shortly.

Shortly turned into another week, then another.

When the wedding was less than 3 weeks away I panicked and called the number directly - the company was located in China! So surprise, surprise, I had to wait for an English speaking sales rep. After multiple attempts to get what I was calling about across, I was told my dress was on a ship currently stuck in that embargo pile-up of ships waiting to get into the country.

I didn't cry. I didn't yell. I took a breath and said, is there any other way we can get a new dress to me by this date ( wedding day)? She said to wait a moment. When she came back on the line she said they were going to make another dress for me and within 48 hours they were sending it via air freight to the States.

I asked the obvious question of how much was that going to cost me. Nothing, I was told. The freight and cost of the other dress would be eaten by the company with apologies for the delay.

Gobsmacked and flabbergasted don't come close to what I felt.

True to her word, five days later my dress arrived via air-freight carrier.

Sometimes, in life, when all around you looks like it will end in catastrophe, a ray of sunshine bursts through the dark clouds and gives you hope.

Best experience shopping evah!!!!

Now, the cynics will say that original dress was never on the embargoed ship to begin with, and the only reason they where being so nice was because of that.

I tend to ignore cynics.