drinkypoo's Journal: newegg's lame, geeks is pricy, who's next?

This morning I tried to buy a pack of DVD+R DL discs from Newegg and not only is there no shopping cart button (I had to find the cart in my history) but the cart wouldn't work - it just kept telling me it hadn't loaded completely. I refuse to enable three different sites' worth of javascript to make a shopping cart work, so I ended up spending five bucks more for the same thing on Amazon.

I had gone to Newegg this morning only because Geeks.com (with whom I have had better results in general) has been raising prices and is no longer all that compelling. They keep selling refurb laptops for more than I can find an equivalent product new (and usually from an equally or more reputable manufacturer) for example. If I can't stand Newegg or Computer Geeks, where the heck do I shop?

I would very much prefer it if their website were usable on slow connections. I was going to suggest IKEA as an example of the web done right, but they have gone to putting a big fat flash movie on their front page, which requires a newer flash than I have on Ubuntu Gutsy.

Flash is the spawn of Satan

[unitron]

On second thought, perhaps I'm being too hard on ol' Lucifer. Even he isn't evil enough to have come up with Flash.

If Flash has any virtue, it's that it serves as notice that the site is probably one I'm better off avoiding.

Complain

[plover]

They'll never fix it if you don't tell them it's broken.

Re:

[BobPaul]

I sometimes send letters "why I purchased from your competitor" to webstores. Often it's because they make me register before I can see the shipping costs. I'm not sure it's ever made a difference, though.

Re:

[plover]

Most companies actually do care when they lose a sale. Even the biggest ones have public relations departments that may not exactly respond to each, but they monitor "trends" in complaints.

I've seen projects based on correcting problems raised in complaint letters. The most effective letters are the ones like yours: "I found 'X' so problematic that I went to your competitor, where they do 'Y' instead." But the ones where it's general whining, like "your employee Joe was surly" or "your service was so

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Well, see sibling comment "Agreed [slashdot.org]"... Newegg in particular is crapping up their webstore more every time you visit, they're headed in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, Geeks.com doesn't care if I don't buy because of their prices; they had nice low prices to begin with, and they've been ratcheting them up over time now that they have a Name. So these aren't really the kind of problems that can be solved be complaining (barring actually getting access to the right person at newegg, which is so unlikely as to n

Agreed

[SatanicPuppy]

Newegg's interface is more annoying every time I go to the damn site. Whatever happened to nice HTML shopping sites? How many bells and whistles do you really need?

http referrer blocked?

[nickyj]

newegg requires to know the http referrer. I found that if I had the firefox extension which blocks the http referrer enabled for newegg, the site wouldn't let me login or buy anything. I guess it's just another security "feature"

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I haven't blocked the referrer, but it's just one more reason why they are stupid. I understand wanting that information, but not requiring it. Ultimately, though, I guess people who want privacy can shop somewhere else... I haven't figured out where yet, though.