Written by Peter Murphy on Saturday, December 29, 2007

Are you an online shopper?

Sometimes I forget how big this internet thing really is. Online, I have a circle of close friends, then a wider circle of acquaintances, Then there are the people you contact for business reasons and incidental stuff, spam and online shopping. Don’t forget all those lotteries you won as well! I’ve purchased things online via my device, as well. In fact my current device, was purchased online with my previous/backup device.

In years of online transactions I’ve only had one mishap. At work one morning I got a call from my bank’s security centre saying they had detected an unusual transaction. I didn’t recognise the company, so the transaction and my credit card, were cancelled! Even though I was eventually issued a new card it was an inconvenience. I have avoided unnecessary online purchases ever since. Today, I came across these statistics and was reminded how huge this thing is!

On December 10, its busiest day during the current season, Amazon said shoppers ordered more than 5.4 million items, or 62.5 items per second.

That’s 3750 transactions a minute! How is that? Obviously there’s a huge amount of people buying online, what we don’t see is a proportional graph that indicates their satisfaction! Whatever this means, Amazons shares booted 2% because of this spending frenzy.

This year, top sellers included toys such as the Jakks EyeClops Bionic Eye, video games including Nintendo’s Wii video game systems and Super Mario Galaxy, and consumer electronics products like the Garmin GPS and Samsung LCD high definition TVs.

There’s one comment on this post at ZDnet that says

Hmmm … maybe that’s why they couldn’t deliver my presents on time

I ordered DVDs and a book for my brother-in-law from Amazon on December 10th and was assured that they would arrive at his house by Christmas. You can imagine my surprise when on December 20th I get an email from Amazon saying neither gift will arrive until January and “please visit our site to confirm that is OK or cancel the order”. Well, at that point what was I supposed to do, they didn’t give me sufficient time to buy/send a new gift so I was stuck. I wonder how many other people Amazon stuck it to in the name of overselling/over-promising/under-delivering? I won’t be giving them my holiday business next year and I’m guessing others they disappointed won’t either. I’ve used Amazon for years and this is the first time they have disappointed me like this. I find it suspicious that it is also their best sales year. Just how much over-promising did they do to bump those numbers up?

Were your stockings full?