Thu. Sept 27, 2007

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Even before Internet shopping, I was a big proponent of mail order. I used to buy clothes, gifts and any number of things from catalogs and have to go no further than my front door to get them.

That was all done by phone then, but since the magic of the Internet, it's gotten even easier. Even returning items is easier.

So last week I wanted to order a birthday present for my nephew - he was getting one of the new iPods for his birthday and I thought one of those charging station/clock radios would be a nice accessory, but I wanted to be sure it worked with the just-released iPods, so I grabbed the phone.

What ensued was a jungle of menus within menus. When I finally negotiated all the options, I was put in a queue for the next available professional. But surprisingly I didn't have to wait that long for "Neil." However, Neil had to do some double-checking to verify that the item in question would work with the new iPods. After several minutes we verified that this was indeed the product I wanted.

Then came the filling-in-the-form part of the inquisition. Each inquiry (first name, last name) was followed by a request to repeat my answer. One response required me to repeat the answer several times, followed by spelling it. Twice.

We finally got through all that, Neil read it all back to me, gave me a confirmation number, thanked me, and was gone. The whole process took about three times as long as the online process.

Hooray for the Internet!