AIBU to think that shopping is now a cumbersome and alienating experience?

[HauntedBungalow]

I appreciate it may just be me as I've never been one for leisure shopping - I mean I've never seen it as being a hobby or pastime, more a means to an end.

But obviously at Xmas I have to do quite a lot of it, to get presents for people, and my goodness this year it's really felt like work.

Go online - well that's just wading through pages of shit, drop boxes, pop-ups and complex return and postage policies.

In person homewares - half the time the item isn't in the shop - back to online, as above, with no real idea about what the thing looks like (it would be a cold day in hell before I drop £2k on a sofa based on nothing more than a fucking photograph). Or it's broken/no one knows what the price is etc.

In person clothing - most sizes aren't there, and even if you do manage to find something you have to scan it and bag it yourself, regardless of if you're spending a fiver or £500. Piss take.

Supermarkets - don't even get me started. Find your stuff, scan your stuff, pack your stuff into your own bags (or pay £1 for each) with not a staff member in sight ... that's a warehouse, not a shop. And, most times the shelf tickets aren't accurate, the offers don't go through, the self scan tills are dirty, the shelves are dirty, everything is in the wrong place, loads of things are missing and the entire place is freezing cold. (Why are they so cold?) It's fucking garbage.

Is this just what late stage capitalism looks like? Where everything is dowdy and crap, and you have a constant background feeling of being slightly mugged and you'll never get what you want but will spend loads of money regardless?

I used to really excited by the shops but now I look down the mall and just see the worst of capitalism as enormous global brands try to prise money from me. No feelings of joy in that.

I feel like I'd like an official rank of online shops. Like avoid this site as drop shipping tat, but buy from these websites

Yeah it's not fun to shop anymore 😕

Yes, I used to love shopping, buying new stuff, but now I hate it. I try really hard not to over buy now due to climate and waste, but even when I need new clothes there is nothing that good quality, fits well and is nice. Lots of tops are cropped ruling then out for me. There is a lack of women’s clothing store around, and the sizing is all to variable even in the same stores. It’s all rubbish now a days. Cheap shit but expensive.
online is tiresome

Don’t forget scanning your receipt to be allowed to exit the shop, because you have had to do everything else yourself so it follows that you also have to make sure you aren’t a thief.

Supermarket shop - I use Ocado so it takes 10 minutes to order and 10 minutes to put it in the cupboards (family of 5) so no issue there.

Clothes can be annoying as availability is rubbish these days. I also hate sending things back when shopping online and guessing sizes.

i chose a sofa online but went to try it out and found it really uncomfortable so we found a different one in the store. So many options online but I limited our search to what we could test out as it’s an expensive and important purchase.

I’ll add cars to the list. I’ve concluded our local Ford garage is a front to some joinery laundering scheme as 3 times (in 10 years) I’ve attempted to buy a car from them - a fiesta, a ka and an smax and each time been ignored or dismissed as “we don’t have any” before I’ve even told them my budget. I had cash each time but had to go to a different dealership. Last May I went to look at Kugas … I’ve ended up with a vw Tiguan from the vw garage next to Ford 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s all rubbish now a days. Cheap shit but expensive.

God yes, thank you for raising that point about clothing. It's so normalised now I didn't even think of it in my op. Our clothes are made of actual plastics that are killing off ocean creatures. Plus they look like shit and you can't tell from one size 12 item to another which will actually be anything remotely resembling a size 12 (or 10, or whatever).

We’ve started going to Lidl now precisely so I don’t have to spend an hour traipsing through a warehouse of 28372 different types of jam.

@TeenLifeMum yes, cars! Who tf buys a car online? I mean seriously do these people walk amongst us? Because car dealers seem to think they do. You ring up about something they've got advertised and it's all "well we can transport it here from Goole or some other arsehole place, and you can look at it for five milliseconds to make your mind up but after that your viewing deposit will disappear into my capacious buttcheek bar the usual exclusions of earthquake and outright ongoing war". Wankers.

Haha to be fair we did get a car transported from their Northampton branch. In reality we know nothing about cars so when they open the bonnet we’re like “cool, that looks like it’s probably an engine and no sign of fire 🤷🏻‍♀️”. We went for a 3yo car with a high spec and low mileage in the colour I liked and hoped for the best.

clothes - changing rooms always seem to allow men in now. Can’t stand it.

Is this just what late stage capitalism looks like
That's exactly it - corporations going down your pockets for the last few pounds before the giant Ponzi scheme that is capitalism collapses. There's little in the way of choice/competition as most shops are now owned by the same handful of parent companies. The in-person supermarket shopping experience has all the fun and glamour of a prison visit - and with every trip prices have risen by another 10% and the list of chores you have to complete before you can take home your overpriced rotten potatoes, soft apples and strawberries that taste like wet onions is even more complex.

Sounds a bit like my local lidl 😄. I picked up some chicken wings in the frozen section and had to dig to the flavour I like. At the bottom of the freezer was loose prawns, veg, berries and a fish finger. Absolutely grim. They clearly never clean the freezers as that 5 stock type moves all collecting at the bottom. You can use a manned till in quite a few clothes shops like Uniqlo and Matalan. You have to remember to remove the security tags.

I was only thinking this morning that only enjoyed shopping as a teen and young adult. I only buy things I need as I need them. I don't browse anymore. I saw some jeans I liked online but postage was £5. Then paid returns. I don't want to take the risk of paying £8 postage to find out they don't fit and return. It's good overall for me personally to buy much less than I did pre covid times. Covid sped up the downfall of the highstreet imo

You are being a bit unreasonable..it always has been!

Ok, maybe it is getting worse...the quality and cut of clothes now seems so bad...I remember when high street shops had much better quality (lots of them have closed down now)

I hate the way Sports Direct don't even give you a bag, you have to buy a bag for life. Spend €€ there and won't even give you a bag...such a poor customer experience to save a few p.

I agree with you op. I shop on-line but for the very first time this Christmas, the experience was so problematic that I have vowed to shop as little as possible from now on!

First, many of the websites are clunky and once you click on a thumbnail, you get sent back to the beginning again, rather than being taken back to where you were last looking! So annoying.

But purchasing things is not really a problem; they encourage you to do that of course!

The main issue was that the deliveries were very hit and miss. We had so many parcels go missing it was ridiculous. Most were sent directly to a pick up point which got so overwhelmed that they sent parcels back before the time limit and they have not yet been processed by the vendor so I haven't got a refund! Some got delayed at a warehouse and according to UPS are still stuck there!

I've come home to find parcels on the pavement outside my front door. Goodness knows how many were stolen before that.

And in order to complain, with the vendor, post office, or delivery company, you get sent down an endless rabbit hole of logging in, registering, filling in endless personal details, verifying you are not a robot, deep diving in to FAQ pages, engaging in an on-line chat with a bot or customer service rep, and going around and around in a circle that goes precisely nowhere! It's started to dawn on me that this is a deliberate policy so people just give up trying to get a refund!

The system is broken!

Try working in these "shops"
Multi Million pound business and our store is literally falling apart beneath us...
The roof is leaking so bad thousands of pounds of stock is being wrote off every year, there's walls crumbling from water leaks, the toilets are an actual health hazard.. There's mushrooms growing in the toilets, they've ripped up the tiles in the ladies and the men's are disgusting and now the heating is broke and on Thursday I went to work in 5 layers of clothes coz it's absolutely freezing in our big store.. They've said they need to get onto the roof and they won't be able to hire the crane to do the job til at least April...
Our big company pay a million pound a year for the lease of our building..

But it's OK next week they've made a huge number of us redundant and the rest of the store they can't decide whether they are making it smaller, meant to be refurbing it but who knows...

If you think shopping in retail is an awful experience, working in it is really no laugh either and that's without the rude customers and abuse we have to put up with every day!!

The whole country is slowly going to pot... 😭

I love shopping in supermarkets as long as they're not too busy. I find it strangely relaxing just wandering around them.

Do you work in jd sports 🤔

Lol no.. So there's more of these stores then and companies putting profit above their staff safety?!!

Totally agree. For most things, I do most of my shopping online because it’s the only way to guarantee stock. And quality is shit despite extortionate prices. Currently looking online at the sales (for clothes in particular) thinking “no wonder that is on sale, who would have paid $200 for it in the first place?”

I’m a very average clothes size 12, but if you go in store you can only find tiny size 6s or very large sizes, so have no option but to order online. I have quite small feet so can usually find shoes in store, whereas more average-sized people probably can’t.

In the sales I have just purchased four items from a homewares store online. This is a medium-sized chain store here in NZ which has four stores within a 15 minute drive of my house. Yet not one of those stores had any of the items that I wanted, and my four items came in separate packages from three different stores across the country.

Added to this that “service” in most stores is a joke - certainly in the supermarkets etc, if not other shops.

Agreed.

I live in a small town and only shop locally at quiet times and I avoid big shopping centres.

I also mostly buy stuff from charity shops rather than new and I have reduced the amount of clothes/shoes/makeup that I buy drastically over the past couple of years.

I try to support small independent shops as much as I can. I am sick of chains..

I hate supermarkets and I just decided that I am going back to Ocado as I just can't deal with the busy and noisy environment big shops like that.

There's a few second-hand bookshops I like and a handful of independent shops where everything is good quality, you aren't overwhelmed by choice or exhausted by lugging your other shopping all around the store and the overall experience is straightforward and easy ....... but, aside from that, I now hate shopping.

Online shopping is the worst. I ordered some presents before Christmas that got lost in transit and it took so much time and effort to sort it all out. Just stressful.

My local supermarkets are vast and crowded and the staff always treat the customers like they are in the way. It takes ages to get from one side of the store to another and it feels like you've been on an assault course when you do.

Just after Christmas I had to buy a new washing machine. I went to an actual shop to buy one in the sales. There were lots of staff in the shop doing things but not one single person was serving. After eventually engaging a staff member I was told I had to order the model I wanted online and that after paying for delivery and installation it was going to be as expensive as one of the models not in the sale which came with those things for free.

Once the washing machine was delivered I found out that in order to activate the guarantee I had to register my purchase online and to do so I had to set up an account with the manufacturer. There was no manual in the box and to get one I had to download the manufacturer's app and then used that to download a manual. I just wanted to use the bloody thing but had to spend ages online making up new passwords and finding product numbers. It was all so irritating. Now the manufacturer keeps spamming me with offers on washing machines even though I bought one from them only last week.

I think I would like to go back to the days when Alf Roberts stood behind his counter in a brown overall and you could go in with a list and he would fetch it all for you, ring it through and bag it up. Although the bag would be a wicker basket.

I feel for retail staff as I believe that they probably do encounter some unpleasant people but I have to say I find some of them very rude and unhelpful even though I am unfailingly polite and pleasant. I sometimes wonder do the staff complaining about customers online have the self-awareness to recognise that they may sometimes provoke bad feeling.

Good customer service feels like a rarity now and it definitely influences me on where to spend my money.

Agree, it's a depressing experience these days. In my city centre there's only 5 shops to buy clothes, and they're all fast fashion, except for M& S, where I rarely find anything that suits me and is stylish. And I used to LOVE clothes shopping!

Also, the clothes are so dull. Everyone wears those unflattering, dark coloured puffa jackets. No fun, style or individuality...

I feel like I want to go to a big European city like Paris, Berlin or Barcelona for a shopping weekend, where hopefully the experience is more fun and interesting!