NormsMilfordBlog

Recently my wife and I spent a few hours in several stores looking for a bed skirt (dust ruffle, if you prefer) with a 20” drop. We raised our bed so that our dog Sadie could crawl under it easier when she gets scared by fireworks or thunder.  So now we need a 20”-drop bed skirt. Try finding that in your general purpose stores like Walmart or Target or Kohl’s. They carry all sorts of standard 14” and 15” drop bed skirts for all sizes of beds, but not 20” drops.

Unlike many people who I know, I generally like shopping for things on-line. It’s really amazing how you can find even the most obscure stuff for sale somewhere by someone. Sometimes that can be a problem, especially since you have no idea if those someone’s are honest or not or whether they will actually deliver the product or stand behind it if it needed to be returned.  That’s where big, trusted aggregators’ sites like eBay and Amazon come in. They supposedly create a trusted shopping environment that takes care of things like payments and returns and disputes.

So, off I went on my on-line search for 20” drop bed skirts. Just type that into Google or Bing and you’ll get lots of responses. Many of the sites that popped up I the results didn’t really have bed skirts with 20” drops, just lots of regular bed skirts. That’s one drawback of the search engines – they don’t always do a good j0ob of filtering out things to match your exact search input. After some human filtering I found what looked like a good deal on what I was looking for on eBay. They had 20” drop bed skirts in the size that I need in stock and at a reasonable price.

I tried to buy the bed skirt, but had to end up abandoning the shopping cart (hear that eBay, another abandoned shopping cart) because the eBay shopping cart application insisted on not allowing me to check out unless I acknowledged that I had earlier set up an account with the same email address that I tried to use this time.  I vaguely recall signing up for an account many months ago, while trying to buy something else; but, I have long since forgotten what password I might have used. Besides that, I checked the box that said that I wanted to check out as a Guest and not using my account. I left and the bed skirt went un-purchased (hear that eBay bed skirt purveyor).

I suppose that I could have gone back and checked out as a Guest using another email address (like many people I’ve ended up with 3-4 email accounts), but the point was and is that eBay’s system is not customer friendly. If the app asked me on the way into the checkout process if I wanted to check out as a Guest, it should have allowed that, no matter what my email address. Had the shopping cart app even given me another chance to refuse to sign into my account and check out as a Guest, instead; I would have completed the purchase. But, because the eBay Shopping Cart app insists that I sign into an account that I really don’t need or care about any more and will not let me proceed unless I do; I will find my bed skirt elsewhere.

There’s a lesson in here for eBay and other on-line sites. You still need to provide a customer-centric shopping experience, not one that forces the customer to bend to your needs or rules. I appreciate that you have a record of my last visit in your database and that I might have even signed up for an account at some time in the past; however, this is now and I just wanted to get in and out and be done with this shopping trip as quickly and easily as possible (sort of like at a real store). If you keep throwing up a bunch of roadblocks just to meet your own needs; as they say in New Jersey – Furgetaboutit!

I get Website Magazine, because I’m a Webmaster myself for five informational sites (as opposed to the transactional sites that I’m writing about here). The latest issue talks about shopping cart abandonment as the biggest problem facing internet merchants. According to the story in Website Magazine 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before the transaction is completed. I wonder how many are abandoned for something as stupid as my experience with eBay. Have any of you had similar experiences you’d like to share?

I recently had lunch with a member of the Board of Directors of a local organization called Onward March. This is a group right here in the area (at 2655 Oakley Park Rd in Commerce, MI) that has taken upon the itself the mission of trying to help veterans who are returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan (or elsewhere)  and need to transition back into civilian life. The biggest need is for jobs for these ex-soldiers, many of whom have great skills that they learned in the military and all of whom have been through life-changing experiences that force one to mature quickly.

One key idea behind this organization is that of helping many of these vets become entrepreneurs, to start small businesses of their own; businesses which hopefully will add to employment. The group supplies mentoring and coaching to help these budding business men and women get started and understand better how to function in the business world. There are also targeted placement services trying to match up vets with jobs in the community. Finally the group is running a business incubator at their facility which provides office space, infrastructure and coaching/mentoring for the start-up companies until they can get on their feet.

The problem of returning vets not being able to find work has become alarming, with approximately 248,000 recent veterans without jobs this summer. There are many cases right here in our own community. Organizations like the AmVets and VFW do what they can to help, but most of their efforts are focused upon short term needs like providing food and shelter. Only through programs that provide jobs will these bets get back on their feet in civilian life.

As a vet myself, I can recall the hostile environment that my generation of Viet Nam vets returned to in the 60’s and 70’s. You almost had to sneak back into town if you had been to Viet Nam, what with all of the anti-war protests and anti-military sentiment at the time. I was probably lucky not to be cashiered out right after I got back from Viet Nam and even luckier to have gone through OCS training and getting my commission. I left the Army at the rank of Captain and had just come off a good assignment teaching data processing systems analysis; so, I was able to get a job selling computers for Burroughs (a company that Ernie Harwell might say is lo-o-o-o-o-ng gone).

Today’s returning soldiers are at least greeted as returning heroes, but that doesn’t translate very often into an immediate job opportunity. Many of the vets getting out today have families, as we did back in the Viet Nam era. Some of the vets may suffer from war wounds, either seen or out of sight (or within).  From what I read elsewhere the country isn’t doing all that good of a job in providing care for those with war –related needs, so that just adds to the problem.

I don’t know if Onward March will be successful or not, but at least they are trying. You can read more about them at their web site www.onwardmarch.org . I’m sure that they could use more help (mentors and coaches and the like) and they certainly can use more money (there is a donation page on the site). With the 4^th of July coming up, it’s probably a good time to remember that what we are celebrating on that day – Independence Day – go all the way back to the original founding fathers/soldiers that got this nation started.  So go to the Onward March site and check them out, then do what you can to help them out. We can’t solve this problem at a national level, but we can sure do something about it locally.