Internet teething problems: on-line ordering

We haven’t really mastered that internet thing yet, have we? In particular the whole ordering on-line business.

Apart from anything else, it seems to me that there ought to be a load more services available. The NSA and GCHQ ought to be able to send us helpful little messages that pop into our inboxes:

‘You ordered the Provence Herbs version last time. Are you sure you want the Lavender this time?’

It would allow those wonderful securocrat establishments to do a little gentle marketing to improve their brand image. I modestly suggest the strap line:

This message brought to you free of charge, 

courtesy of the NSA/GCHQ [delete as appropriate]. 

Spooks at the service of people

Even without that, I can’t help feeling the actual logistics needs seriously looking at. I mean, I ordered a tube of aftershave balm the other day. It would fit comfortably into a pocket. Metaphorically it would fit into the mouth of some of our more opinionated politicians (I leave it to you to supply a name or two here).

But the company chose to send it in an elegant box, swaddled in bubble wrap, in a much larger box half of which was filled by what I think of as ‘single-bubble non-wrap’: you know, one of those huge plastic bubbles of air whose only purpose seems to be to fill the space in packets that are too big for their contents.

The container and the thing contained
Proportionate? I think not

As well as being an affront to any reasonable green sensibilities, all that bulk meant the postman couldn’t get the package through my letter box. So I had to wait for a moment when I’d have the time to pop down to the sorting office, which only came this morning, two full days after the attempt to deliver the package. 

Once at the office I took my place at the back of a queue of twelve people. With six people, you have a reasonable chance of getting to the counter quickly, but once you get beyond six, simple laws of probability mean that you’re practically bound to have at least one person in front of you who:

• has come for a parcel the post office has mislaid 
• didn’t bring any proof of identity 
• denies having ordered the thing delivered and thinks this is somehow the post office’s responsibility

This morning, there were two of these troublesome customers ahead of me.

Once you’ve been through all that, little of the convenience of ordering on-line is left. I mean, the sorting office is further from my home than the shop I used to buy the stuff from. And in the shop there wasn’t usually a queue.

In fact, the only reason for using the on-line service is that the shop no longer stocks the particular balm I favour.

It feels to me as though we’re living a period similar to the 1850s or so. Then it was the railways, today it’s the internet. The new technology has already revolutionised society, but it’s still in its infancy. We have a lot to learn to make it really efficient.

Still, I’ve got my balm. The on-line service did work, even if it hasn’t yet quite learned to work well. I suppose I need to be grateful for small mercies.