So I bought a Canon 10D. It’s completely incredible. I am amazed at how awesome this camera is. But that’s beside the point. I knew it was going to be awesome.
The point is I bought it from State Street Direct who gave me a very good price and very cheap overnight shipping. About $80 better than anywhere else on the price and about $100 better for the shipping. Here’s the catch: They would not give me a tracking number, no matter what I said. They said it was for security reasons. They also would not ship to my work address unless I could have it added to my credit card which my bank would not do.
So, like most people I work all day and cannot stay home and wait for the UPS guy who needs a signature. I paid for overnight shipping but the way it was going to go was:
Day 1: Order the thing.
Day 2: Guy shows up, no one home, leave note. I sign note saying please leave camera at UPS and I’ll pick it up.
Day 3: Guy sees note, leaves camera at UPS.
Day 4: I can pick it up.
Instead I left a note on the door with a signature asking the guy to please take the package right back to UPS so I could get it after work, which he did. Unfortunatly he didn’t leave me a note with a package id or tracking number so UPS wanted nothing to do with me.
So I ran down to the UPS place after work and begged and pleaded and they hooked me up.
That’s not the point.
This is the point.
The point is that for whatever absurd security reasons State Street has for not giving me my tracking number I had to go through a pile of hassle and be worried for two days that I got completely screwed out of $1500, which for me is a hell of a lot of money. These people required me to fax a copy of my credit card and drivers license to them, respond to a email and talk to them on the phone so they could verify the order but their “Security Policy” would not allow them to give me a tracking number so I will not buy from them again. The $Whatever I saved is not worth the bother of chasing down the UPS guy and worrying that I got fucked.
Here is the other point.
I noticed while shopping around that a lot of places will not ship to an address that is not on your credit card. Well, I learned that most debit card companies, i.e. banks will not add additional addresses to their card. I don’t know about you, but I buy everything with my debit card. I don’t have credit cards because:
1) I would go completely insane and be in millions of dollars of debt and…
2) No one will give me one.
So, if because of fraud, e-commerce is going the way of so damn much security that I can’t use it, then what the hell good is it? It would have been easier, less stressful and only slightly more expensive for me to drive to Topeka and buy the camera from a human than what I did instead. E-commerce is about convenience and if it’s not convenient it’s worhtless.
This worries me greatly for a few reasons. One is that I really like e-commerce. I’ve used it quite a bit. I buy books, music, mints, t-shirts, gifts, software and all kinds of shit on the net and I don’t want that to go away. But also, I make a lot of money working in the field. I don’t want that to go away either.
Do I have any ideas or solutions? Of course not. I’ve been drinking all night. How much can you expect from me? This camera kicks ass though. I recommend you buy one; but maybe not from State Street.
Also, since I didn’t mention it before, you should buy an iPod too. I got the 15GB one and it’s very cool. I am also writing some software for transferring music to it because the stuff that comes with it for Windows is just terrible. My software is called vPod (my creativity is just overflowing) and I am going to release it this weekend. Excited? I sure am.