Where is a good place to go?

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Answers

Everywhere. My favorites are Petopia for pet food and toys, Victoria's Secret for underwear and so forth, good old Amazon for books, nowhere for CDs because I have too many already, Bluestone for plants, and Garden.com for other garden stuff. I hardly leave my house at all anymore.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Reel.com is really good. If you order a dvd and enter the code "FREEDVD," they'll e-mail you a $20 gift certificate for your next purchase (you can only to it once, though). They're really fast too. They've got the new Bjork video/DVD compilation "Volumen," for like $17. Definitely worth checking out.

Amazon is great. I do a lot of ordering on Ebay. I tried to get on Toys R Us today and I think the site is down...

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Amazon and Barnes & Noble both - whoever has it cheaper. I have bought from Speigel, Violet.com, Crate & Barrel, oh and I have spent A LOT on Marthastewart.com.

Haven't used E-bay but I have done Amazon's auctions. Pretty cool stuff.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Buy.com lately i've found books and movies cheaper there than at amazon.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

ebay.com, buy.com, amazon.com, and cdnow.com
ebay is best, because you can un-buy stuff there too!  (For auctions, Amazon.com sucks big time)

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Heaven help me. I've recently discovered the joys of online shopping. (So sue me. I got one of those nifty debit-Visa-check cards.) Thank gods it's just a debit card and not a real credit card, or Amazon.com would probably end up owning my soul. I love that place.

I'm with Beth. I could see myself ordering everything online. As soon as I have the extra money (HA!) I wanna find a good clothing site... :)

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Yep, the online shopping world is the only way to go. I hate shopping, and loathe malls, so I love that I never have to leave the house to buy stuff if I don't want to. You can even order groceries and drugstore stuff online!

I've bought from most of the above places, mostly Amazon. I can't even tell you how much I've spent there in the last year. Buy.com is OK -- they are really cheap, but have very little in the way of product descriptions. (For example, if you're buying a DVD movie, they don't have a description or list of what little 'extras' the DVD has that the VHS version doesn't.) But if you don't mind researching what you're buying elsewhere, it's great. $15 for a DVD is not bad. Sometimes they have specials where you don't have to pay shipping. I've bought movies, CDs, and electronics from them, usually with fairly good results. CDnow.com is pretty good too. Barnes & Noble (bn.com) sucks. I ordered a book that they said would ship in 1-2 weeks (it still says that, by the way!), but the book is OUT OF PRINT! I had to e-mail them and ask what the hell happened to my book, and they were pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. "Oh, well, we're sorry, it's out of print. Too bad." (I ended up buying the book at eBay.) Really bad customer service. I'll probably never shop there again.

I've also bought from bigstar.com, xandria.com (very naughty! they have stuff you've never even heard of in the way of sex toys there...but of course that's not what I bought!), avon.com, victoriassecret.com, and even bought my Tae Bo tapes online at taebo.com. (Sorry I don't know html & can't make those all actual links.) I've found that pretty much everybody (except BN) is happy to have your business (probably so they can sell your name to mailing list people!), and they go out of their way to please you. I found a couple of interesting articles via the Today show about shopping online; you might find them helpful, or not, but here are the addresses:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/333636.asp http://www.msnbc.com/news/334067.asp (Parts I & II of a 2-part article by Jean Chatzky, who I think writes for Money magazine.)

I'm thinking about doing ALL of my holiday shopping (except what I've already done in stores) online this year. Beats the hell out of dealing with all the grinches out there!

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

I've been shopping amazon.com since they first opened for business; I use them for books and sometimes for CDs and I will probably buy a bunch of stuff from them for Christmas presents (I certainly did for '97 and '98!)

I also like 800.com (for electronics, etc.) I've bought a Diamond Rio MP3 player there and a boombox and got good price and very quick service.

Also landsend.com -- although I probably order from their catalog using 800 number more than their website... but now that I've got cable access at home I'll probably use the web more since it will be faster than with dialup.

Anyway, those are the main online shops that I use... well, I did buy a new PC online this summer from IBM (but how often do you buy new PC's... once every three years or so? Previous three PCs were ordered from 800 numbers)

I also order tickets online but ticketmaster charges so much in fees that they really piss me off... I wish Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (in Providence) would fill their own ticket orders online instead of linking to ticketmaster... Saw Pennywise on Sunday night (with All and Strung Out as opening acts)... uh, no, I must admit that I am not a big fan of punk rock, but my daughter and her friends are...

[P.S. Lisa, debit cards are very handy, I use mine in supermarkets all the time and also to get money (in local currency) all over the place (has worked just fine for me in London and Vienna and Mexico City and Sydney, etc. although I have been told that most ATM machines in Japan will not accept foreign debit cards)... BUT your debit card gives access to your checking and/or savings account so I always use a MasterCard credit card online for safety... I know that the most that could cost me in case of theft/fraud is fifty bucks (and many merchants, such as amazon, will cover that, also many credit card issuers) but -- depending on your bank's rules, you could end up with your entire account cleaned out -- Also, with credit cards, if what you buy does not meet promises, you can dispute the charge and have it backed out...]

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

i have an unexplicable grudge against amazon.com and refuse to use their services for anything. boooo! hissssss!

for books i usually go to powells (i grew up in portland, and i do miss my sunday morning trips to powells!) or the advanced book exchange. i'm a loyal dell customer, and my winter coat and snow boots came from REI. i bought a copy of the officially out-of-print 1986 transformers movie from videoflicks.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 1999

I love Amazon and more or less keep their book division in business all by myself. Also bookcloseouts.com, which has a huge selection and dirt-cheap prices. They send your purchases book-rate, though, so it takes a LOOONG time.

I've bought airline tickets at Travelocity, and flowers at proflowers.com. They have really nice arrangements, not chintzy and tacky like FTD, and they support hungersite, so I support them.

-- Anonymous, November 18, 1999

I shop where ever they are willing to give me a gift certificate of 5 dollars or more. I have gotten a baby cap and booties, an Enigma CD, an Anne Geddes calendar, the first set of Tae-Bo tapes, a ream of paper from Staples, and a whole bunch of medicines and vitamins from various places, all for free.

Here is the freebies site I like: Your Daily Freebies... aside from all that free stuff, I also get free samples of stuff, stickers, useless junk mail... you name it! I even got 5 Slim-Fast bars for free. Unfortunately, the dog got to the mail before I did.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999