Online trading solves problems – and creates many new ones

The author

Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.

I now order almost everything in my life online. Movies, books, clothes and of course food. Most common food. Buying online is so practical: I used to spend hours and hours in supermarkets, waiting in line for a long time because only one of three checkouts was occupied. Or standing in front of shelves to look for any ingredient that Yotam Ottolenghi assumes in his cookbook as a matter of course that is commercially available.

Today all I have to do is use the search function to find out that the supermarket doesn’t carry fenugreek seeds. And I no longer have to bother with small change at the supermarket checkout, but can think about why my preferred payment method is not accepted by the online supermarket, and why my bank does not participate in the instant transfer service, which the online supermarket is happy to use for the transfer would use.

It’s actually surprising how reliably the Internet has managed to swap out old problems for new problems. Since I’ve had my clothes delivered, I’ve no longer had any problems with salespeople looking at me disparagingly while I’m trying on pants that they don’t think fit. Instead, I have problems with the pants not fitting. And with the opening hours of the parcel shops where I have to return the trousers in the return parcel. A pair of trousers that I would never have ordered if a salesman would have looked at me disparagingly.

I find it difficult at all to estimate sizes on the internet. I wanted to buy voluminous flower vases and was delivered something barely bigger than a shot glass. Once I wanted to order a costume and got a doll dress. Unfortunately, everything looks equally small on a smartphone screen, and if you don’t bother to read the product description carefully, you will quickly experience surprises.

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You have to be most careful when ordering everyday items. I’ve been sent several kilos of ginger before, although I thought I had only ordered a hundred grams. And I was sent a bulk pack of ten boxes of chocolate muesli, although I only wanted one. My online supermarket also offers incremental delivery and the offer looks almost the same as the single pack. Incidentally, it takes quite a long time to finish ten packs of chocolate muesli. Above all, afterwards you have the feeling that you never want to eat chocolate muesli again in your life.

And then you imagine making a wide detour around the shelf with muesli packs in the supermarket in disgust, and you’re glad you never have to go into a supermarket like that again. And then the doorbell rings and the messenger brings another ten packs of chocolate muesli because you accidentally clicked on the subscription function in the offer mask.

More: The problem mail and why anti-mail postage can be a business model

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