Online Xmas Shopping?

[Flack]

So, how much of your holiday shopping this year was done online?

For me, I'd say it was about 80%. The other 20% were people I needed to shop for, but didn't know what to buy them. Walking the aisles still seems better than scrolling through Amazon.

[ubikuberalles]

About 25% as a rough guess. I don't like just giving one gift to my family so I supplement the gift with smaller gifts: candy, calendars, etc. Every year I drop by World Market and I get most of those items there. A trip to Borders gets me the calendars and a visit to Costco gets me other stuff (BTW, Xmas stuff at Costco starts disappearing up to two weeks before Christmas. WTF? I wanted to get some Xmas lights from Costco a couple days ago and they were no longer displayed).

So I placed my online orders a couple days after Thanksgiving and after that I'd just randomly find stuff I like when I go to stores.

[Flack]

Around Black Friday I started checking ThinkGeek, NewEgg, and Amazon and picking out gifts for people. Within a couple of weeks, everything I had ordered had arrived, and almost everything I ordered tax free and free shipping.

Almost every year I find myself wandering the aisles of Walmart on December 24th, looking for something -- anything -- to buy and wrap. This year I decided to spare myself that misery, and actually finished all my shopping early. The one thing I bought locally (an OU Jersey) was purchased at Walmart earlier this week. I think everything we got for the kids was purchased online.

Still, like I said, when there are people that you have no idea what you are going to get for them, it's hard to "browse" online for those people, and walking around in a physical store seems easier. Next year, those people are getting gift cards!

[Felix]

Probably 90% online. I think the only things I bought in a store were gift cards. Everything else, I went to the internet.

[Earl Green]

Honestly?

Almost none of it. I guess I'm getting behind the times. I had no cash on hand for shopping this year - all of my Christmas shopping was done with a mound of trade-in credit I was sitting on at Hastings. So... everyone got something from the Hastings either in Fort Smith or Fayetteville, depending on who had what in stock.

[Flack]

Probably 90% online. I think the only things I bought in a store were gift cards. Everything else, I went to the internet.

Which reminds me, thank you for the awesome card (and gift card)! You didn't have to do that! And actually I got the gift card twice, because shortly after opening the card Morgan took it and lost the gift card, which we found a week later tucked down in between couch cushions. A Festivus miracle, indeed!

[AArdvark]

All the stuff you can't find in regular stores. Which, is becoming more and more stuff now that I think about it.


THE
40 PERCENT
AARDVARK

[Felix]

Which reminds me, thank you for the awesome card (and gift card)! You didn't have to do that! And actually I got the gift card twice, because shortly after opening the card Morgan took it and lost the gift card, which we found a week later tucked down in between couch cushions. A Festivus miracle, indeed!

You're welcome!

[lethargic]

It's hard to say. All the downloading was done online, but the media to burn it all on was done in a store. haha

[ubikuberalles]

Which reminds me, thank you for the awesome card (and gift card)! You didn't have to do that! And actually I got the gift card twice, because shortly after opening the card Morgan took it and lost the gift card, which we found a week later tucked down in between couch cushions. A Festivus miracle, indeed!

Ditto from me, Felix. It was awesome of you for sending me a Xmas card. Mr. Flibble thanks you too and I think it was really cool you sent a card addressed to him.

[icbrkr]

100%. I found that you could buy gift cards online which made it so I didn't have to go out at all. Anti-social for the win!

[Flack]

It's not the anti-social part that bothers me, it's the anti-asshole angle. I mean, seriously -- what is it about Christmas that brings out the worst in people? From the customers to the employees and even people in the parking lot, you are guaranteed to experience unprecedented levels of rudeness. I think I mentioned on Facebook the other day that I saw cars cutting in line to see our town's annual Christmas Light decorations. Seriously?

[Felix]

Ditto from me, Felix. It was awesome of you for sending me a Xmas card. Mr. Flibble thanks you too and I think it was really cool you sent a card addressed to him.

You and Mr. Flibble are welcome. Hope you had a great X-mas.



Flack, I completely agree with you on the asshole angle. I've been calling December the "Me month" because most people think it is all about them. Just because it is Christmas time doesn't mean that you can drive however you want and it doesn't mean you can forget common manners and respect.

[Flack]

My goal next year is to do 100% of my shopping online, and be done by Mason's birthday (12/12).

[Earl Green]

I also need to give felix a shout-out for his annual Santa visit (since things kinda went into a time warp around the holidays here what with me working lots of extra hours, I didn't even pick up the mail until shortly before New Year... yeesh). I was already trying to ramp up my podcasting efforts significantly, but this helped me pick up something that'll make that much easier. Many, many thanks.

[Felix]

You're welcome, Earl!

[ubikuberalles]

So what did you get Earl?

I myself will npot set any goal for online shopping. Between a third and half of the gifts I buy are things I found accidentally at the store. Serendipity for the win. It makes the shopping more enjoyable. Something you really can't replicate on the web.

[Earl Green]

So what did you get Earl?

I got this little baby. I've already got a podcast recorded for this week with it, and a goodly chunk of next week's podcast is in the can too. I already talk to myself all the time, now I can do it productively!

[ubikuberalles]

Cool! As I mentioned in your blog post, I got the same exact model a couple months ago. I selected it over cheaper models because it saved the recording in mp3 format and acts as a disk drive when you plug it in your computer's USB port. Those were major selling points to me and worth the extra bucks.