Top Five Online Shopping Frustrations

Shopping online is easy and fun, but sometimes it has its drawbacks that can drive us mad.

Here is my list of the five most frustrating things, that most of us have experienced at least once while shopping online:

The seller doesn’t accept your card or payment method.

It’s great finding the product that you you’re looking for. Now, it’s time to check out. But, next you find out that the seller doesn’t accept a familiar payment method.

This inconvenience is common on sites like eBay, and it is often leading to shopping cart defections. 

The store “may not” ship to your country

In most countries, major online retailers ship everywhere. But, sometimes merchants tend to ship their items only to selected countries with selected shipping methods.

For example, Amazon has only a limited number of products that can be shipped to the Netherlands, and it is annoying not to have all delivery options available at all times.

Poor customer service

There’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint for delivering excellent customer service, and sometimes retail brands fall short when trying to improve their customer experience. We’ve all experienced cases of bad customer service, where instead of helping, the customer service rep is making our case worse.

According to CrazyCall, 35% of customers will not use a retail brand that repeatedly provides a poor customer experience.

Not trusting the product description or not enough information about it

Sometimes you found yourself not knowing what you are buying. A study by An Post found that over one third (36%) of those who shop online say they have experienced the frustration of ordering goods which do not match the website’s description upon delivery, and one in four (24%) say that “not being able to try on clothes before buying” is a deal-breaker.

The unnecessary newsletters

The shopping frustrations are over. You are satisfied with your purchase and the item got delivered without hassle. But, just after a couple of days, you get an email from Amazon with the subject “Recommended for you: How to keep cozy this Christmas”. This will be in your inbox every day at least until you unsubscribe from these incessant mailing lists. If you unsubscribe to this particular one, you get an other one to “evaluate the purchase”, and afterwards another one for a different service offering.

Get the hell out of my inbox, you spammers!

Stevan Vlaski

Digital Marketer & Brand Identity Developer for Icecat based in North Macedonia.