ON CONSUMERISM
By Arthur Vidro
Once upon a time, people did their holiday shopping in person.
Catalogs were few and far between. The internet did not exist. As a result, people spent less.
Seasonal shopping can quickly get expensive. Here’s a few ideas to minimize the expense.
Feel free to spend what you have.
Do not spend what you do not have — that also means don’t charge purchases unless you can promptly pay the credit card bill in full.
In short, never borrow money to buy a gift.
You can also save money by shopping exclusively in person.
It’s great for the local merchants. And it keeps your money in the region.
Yes, there are trade-offs.
The selection will be narrower in shops you visit than on websites your computer can access.
But that’s part of what saves you money. You learn to limit your purchases to what is available locally. The more limited selection means you buy fewer items. Which means you spend less.
Maybe you would save a few bucks ordering the same items via the internet. But again, consider the tradeoffs. Avoiding websites that urge you to buy more, and that remind you of what you’ve looked at, and tell you what other people are buying (I’ve never understood why anyone should be concerned with what others are buying). Well, without all that, you’ll make fewer impulse buys.
When you shop in person, you can feel a fabric rather than rely on a description. You can smell a scented soap rather than rely on a description. You can determine an item’s true heft and color and size. You can examine the craftsmanship. You can read the tag to learn where an item was manufactured (which is information often omitted from websites).
If you’re buying for yourself, you can try it on in the store so you can determine what fits you best. And if you still want it, buy it.
Returns become much simpler when you can do them in person.
Last month I returned an order to the Vermont Country Store and was refunded in full. No problem. But because I didn’t go in person, I had to pay for the return shipping. I gladly paid it, for it meant getting a full refund.
Buying in person means you’re not devastated by unanticipated shipping delays.
We once ordered in October a Christmas gift for a relative. Little did we know the catalog company never stocked that item. Their set-up was if they received an order for the item, they would order it from the manufacturer (at a lower price than they charged us), shove it into one of their own boxes, and ship it out.
As the holidays approached, we inquired what was delaying the shipment. We were always told it was “on the way,” which was a lie.
Or, if it was on the way, it was on its way to the seller, not to us.
When Christmas passed, and my persistent questions led to their admitting they were waiting for it to arrive from overseas, I canceled the order.
Even then, the company still insisted it was “on the way.”
We also canceled receiving the lying company’s catalog, which contained pretty pictures of lovely items. That’s the whole point of a catalog. To make the reader go “ooh” and “aah” and “I’ll buy that” when without the catalog they’d instead be looking in the local shops that actually stock what they’re selling.
Plus, if you order from faraway places, you might be tempted to buy more than you want, solely to reach the magical purchase amount to get the seller to include Free Shipping.
That’s playing right into the sellers’ hands.
But if you shop in person, you don’t bend over backward looking for supplementary purchases solely to qualify for Free Shipping.
If a shipping fee is reasonable, pay it. Don’t buy three times as many items as you wanted solely to get Free Shipping.
After congratulating yourself for earning Free Shipping, you’ll realize the items you added to the order to earn Free Shipping, well, you didn’t really want them all that much.
And if you return the extra items? Then the Free Shipping you had received gets retroactively canceled and you end up paying for what would have been the full shipping cost of any items you retain.
Again, whether it’s to help the community or to save yourself money, consider doing your holiday shopping predominantly in-person.
You might even get to know the local shopkeepers and perhaps make friends with other customers.
