Sunday 8 April 2012

MISS A’s SPREE EXPERIENCE (PART 1)

Was sharing my blogspot with a couple of colleagues during TGIF lunch last week until it slowly turned into a debate of whether sprees are a boon or bane to online shopping these days.
While most of us were neutral, one colleague was totally against it as she was badly traumatised by her spree experience. Her experience, to me, is worth sharing and thus I got her permission today to reproduce a short summary of what she has shared here:

“Miss A (her fave Korean pop group :P) participated in a spree at a popular forum and ordered some baby products from whom she claimed to be an established spree organiser (Miss T). After making the 1st payment and waiting for a day, there was no confirmation reply from Miss T. So, she emailed Miss T to check on the status of her order.
She got snapped at by Miss T for spamming her mailbox and was told that she will get her confirmation once she is free to reply and Miss T started complaining how busy she will get if everyone sends her an email to follow up.
In Miss A’s exact words, this is like I ordered a bowl of noodles at a hawker centre and after an hour it was still not delivered to me. I walked back to the stall to enquire about my bowl of noodles politely but got snapped by the stall auntie: you cannot see I’m very busy meh?!!!
This probably got the both of them to a bad start so when the final shipping charges were more than what was suggested and Miss A was asked to top up, it was the final straw:” How do I know if she charged some additional shipping charges to me just because I have offended her?”

Nonetheless, because she has paid for the item in full and the item was with Miss T who was quite adamant of not sending the item until a top up is done, Miss A had no choice but to pay up.”  

After hearing her experience, I am not sure if she is just being unlucky or this is happening to most people participating in forum sprees. But she did point out a valid concern very close to my heart although I have had far more satisfying experiences, compared to her. (The couple of sprees that I have participated in had been relatively smooth.) The issue she pointed out – the lack of transparency in shipping costs – is exactly the reason that prompted me to do my own shipping. 

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