Internet Shopping

It's just so darn easy. I've had to make a serious effort to curtail my purchasing, or at least slow down. It's always a little bit of a crapshoot, as to whether the item will be exactly as you expect, how long it will take to arrive, and will it work?

In the past two weeks, I've made three purchases: a couple of new covers for patio furniture from Koverroos.com. Arrived in 4 days, excellent product. I was looking for the best covers on the market, after my last ones rotted in less than 18 months. Two 2007 calendars from Calendars.com. Supposedly shipped 8.2 from Dallas. From Dallas, they went to Cincinnati (why I don't know) and supposedly left there for points unknown, on 8.6. It is 8.11 and they have yet to arrive. Calendars.com says if 16 business days go by with no delivery, they will ship again. That's promising.

Third purchase was a desk lamp from Lamps.plus. Did quite a bit of nosing around on the internet, looking for just the right lamp, with plenty of wattage. Still wasn't sure, so went to a Lamps Plus store, only to be disappointed with the few desk lamps they actually stocked. They did have computers available in store to order from their website, but I chose to return home and do more shopping. Finally settled on a great lamp with two moveable arms, and a total of 140 watts of halogen lamps. Ordered it from LampsPlus.com. It arrived in three days (excellent), however one of the two arms would not provide light. I swapped bulbs, no luck. I am now involved in a long, return process. Yes, they are going to make it right, but it's going to take at least a week, and I'm not thrilled. The styrofoam packing fell apart before I could even get the lamp out of the box, so good luck to me when I ship it back.