Being Mark Cohen

I was in the market for a home theatre system, and since I’ve started working in the online retail space I’ve been way more willing to shop online.  I wasn’t looking for a spectacular setup given that my hearing is not exactly the best in the world and whatever I buy will be subjected to kids until it dies.  I discovered a reasonably priced LG setup that has wireless rear speakers, for sale on Big Brown Box – which is in a way a competitor to the business I work for.  I thought I’d post my experiences here in the hope of digesting them myself and maybe gaining some insight into the pros and cons of buying high commitment goods online.

My initial purchase was about two weeks ago.  Everything went through really smoothly, and I received a follow-up call from Big Brown Box the next day to verify the purchase and to advise that the goods would ship with a courier company who would be in touch shortly to arrange a delivery date.  When the courier company called, they couldn’t advise a time and so I had to make sure someone was home for a whole day to receive the delivery. 

The delivery arrived late last Friday and I immediately jumped in and set up the system.  I soon discovered that the unit was defective and the DVD and CD player did not work. I immediately jumped online to log a support ticket on their website and was very disappointed to find that the unit I had just received broken was now on sale for less than I paid.  Grrrr…

I was too late to get in touch with anyone that day and so was resigned to waiting for Tuesday morning to see if I was stuck with a dud.  Quite the contrary.  Early Tuesday morning I was contacted by someone from Customer Care at Big Brown Box, to advise me that they had arranged for a replacement unit to be sent out and for the couriers to collect the faulty unit.  I organised a pickup today, and this time was smart enough to organise with the couriers to pick up and deliver to my office location.  I got home, set up the unit and it’s all working perfectly.  Sounds great, and there are no wires running across my floors.

My afterthoughts are that the main negative points against buying online are

• The most intimidating part of buying online is not meeting the person or people I am dealing with.  
• There is a total absence of connection with the supplier, which means that I was left feeling fear when the unit was defective.  The only thing that an online business can do to counter that fear is convince me that they have excellent customer care, and then to follow through swiftly and completely should the need arise.  Kudos to Big Brown Box, and to their customer care in particular for doing just that.
• The couriers who do the deliveries for online retailers generally cannot advise a delivery time, making the logistics around deliveries and work commitments frustrating
• Not actually getting to touch and see the goods I was buying made me nervous.  I placed a heavy reliance on people’s reviews online and did a fair amount of googling looking into the product before committing to buy.  A known brand name really helped sway me even on a mid-range setup.  I was happier to pay slightly more for a name I trusted would have a valid warrantee. 

At the end of all this the question that needs answering: Would I buy from Big Brown Box again? Undoubtedly. Would I buy a product like this blindly, online again?  Logically I should say no.  But knowing myself, I’d say probably