E-Commerce, thy name is mud

Posted: Thu, 13 December 2007 | permalink | No comments

So much for the idea that you can buy anything you like online, whenever you want.

My laptop's screen has been acting dicky lately, and research suggests the most likely candidate is the backlight inverter. Luckily, there's online guides that show me (with pictures!) how to get at that and get the FRU number off it. Easy so far.

Now I just need to find a new one. $SEARCH_ENGINE to the rescue. Plug in the FRU number and up come pages and pages of results. Oh goody, I should have no trouble here.

Except that, when I visit this myriad of sites, there's a lot of similarity in pricing and content (not the look of the sites -- no, they're all completely different -- just the prices and textual descriptions).

I've only managed to identify four separate stores, from visiting a good couple of dozen search results:

My choices, then, are: extortion, impossibility, slow extortion, or probable scam artist. What a set of choices.

So, I've come to the conclusion that e-commerce is a complete and utter joke unless you're in the US. So much for the global market and all that bollocks. Back to shopping the old-fashioned way for me.


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