A few days ago, my friend Natalie sent me a message about a shirt she keeps seeing on Pinterest. She loves it. But she hasn’t bought it.
Natalie has been burned by online shopping before, and this particular shirt brought all of that back.
She told me about one website that presented itself as a small mother-and-daughter boutique. There was a whole story about the business, pictures of a cute storefront and beautiful linen clothing. It seemed like the kind of little shop you might stumble across while traveling and be thrilled you found it.
So she ordered.
It wasn’t until she started dealing with the company that things began to feel off. She noticed language mistakes she hadn’t paid much attention to before and began questioning whether the storefront and mother-and-daughter story were what she originally thought they were.
And those beautiful linen clothes?
What arrived felt like cheap synthetic fabric.
Then she discovered that returning everything would cost about $90.
Ooof.
That was Natalie’s word, and I think it works just fine.
But then she mentioned something else that stopped me. She had also once ordered a great-looking pair of “Clark’s” shoes online. Whey they arrived, she said they were basically vinyl and about four sizes too small.
Wait a minute…
I bought those shoes too.
I Knew Those Shoes
This is where the story gets interesting because I didn’t just think the shoes in the photograph looked like Clark’s.
I already owned that exact shoe in another color.
I compared the picture in the ad with the pair on my shoe rack AND with the shoe on the actual Clark’s website.
Same shoe.
Or at least the picture was.
What arrived at my house was something else entirely.
That experience stuck with me because I wasn’t looking at some unfamiliar shoe and hoping for the best. I recgonized it. And apparently Natalie and I had both seen the same thing and thought we knew what we were buying.
Which reminded me of a dress.
In My Defense, It was About 2 A.M.
I saw a dress online that I loved.
The color was right. The design was very similar to a dress I already owned from another designer, and the fabric LOOKED the same.
The price was also better.
Now, I should probably mention that all of this excellent decision-making was happening in the wee hours of the morning.
Who else shops when she can’t sleep?
I knew my size and that the dress was supposed to have a snug fit. So I even went up a size.
See? I was thinking.
What I did not do was check the actual garment measurements.
When the dress arrived, it was incredibly small. And that fabric I was so sure I recognized at 2 a.m.?
Not even close.
I contacted the seller, and they refunded my money. Then they told me I didn’t need to send the dress back.
Just give it to a friend.
A friend?
The quality was so bad I would have been embarrassed to give it to a friend.
That dress taught me something. Because I already owned a similar style, I filled in information that wasn’t actually there. I know how MY dress fit. I knew how MY fabric felt and I know the quality of the dress hanging in MY closet
But none of that told me anything about the one I was about to order.
Sometimes the Red Flags Aren’t Red
That’s what I kept thinking about after Natlaie and I swapped stories.
We tend to imagine that a questionable online retailer is going to LOOK questionable.
But what if it doesn’t?
What if it seems like a charming boutique? What if the product photo shows a shoe you already know? Or the fabric resembles something hanging in your closet? And what if the website promises a generous return window?
All of those things can make us feel more comfortable clicking BUY.
And I think that’s the part we sometimes miss.
Sometimes we are not taken in because we don’t know enough. Sometimes we’re taken in because we see something we do know.
Natalie told me that she now reads the fine print on returns very carefully. She wants to know where a company is located and, importantly, where a return would actually have to be sent.
That $90 experience taught her to look a little closer.
My dress did the same for me.
But not every online shopping story has to end badly.
Often a Good Return Policy is Key to the Reason I Buy
I wear size 11 shoe. That alone can limit my choices in stores.
I also have a second toe that’s longer than my big toe.
Yes, you needed to know that.
It means some round-toe shoes can be a problem for me even when they’re technically the right size.
I once ordered a pair of shoes from a retailer with the kind of return policy I love. I had 30 days, and I could actually wear the shoe in my everyday life and return them if they didn’t work for me.
Not walk across the living room carpet and try to predict how my feet would feel five hours later.
Actually wear them.
So I ordered them.
And I returned them.
The shoes didn’t work for me, but I didn’t consider the purchase a bad experience. I understood the terms before I ordered, and the retailer did exactly what it said it would do.
That experience changed the way I think about returns.
The return policy is part of what I am buying.
I want to know how long I have, whether I’m getting a refund, or store credit, who pays the return shipping and definitely WHERE I’m expected to send that package.
Because “free returns for 60 days” can sound wonderful until you read the rest of the details.
So I Made Us Some Homework
Natalie originally contacted me because she wanted to know where she (and others) should look before ordering from an unfamiliar online retailer.
By the time we finished messaging, I realized how many of those lessons I had learned myself.
Some more successfully than others.
I don’t think the answer is to stop shopping online. I certainly don’t plan to. There are too many things I can find online that I may never find locally.
But I do think we need to slow down long enough to know what we’re actually agreeing to before we click BUY.
So I made two free guides.
Before You Click Buy: A Smarter Guide to Shopping for Clothes Online walks you through what to look for before you shop, before you buy and when the package arrives.
It covers the retailer itself, fabric information and reviews, product photos and those very important return details.
»>GET BEFORE YOU CLICK BUY
And because deciding WHERE to buy something still leaves another question, I made a second guide (actually I updated a previously made guide)
Forget the Tag, Trust the Tape: A No- Stress Guide to Getting a Better Fit When Shopping Online helps you use your own measurements along with size charts, garment measurements and fit information to make a better decision about what size to order.
»>GET FORGET THE TAG, TRUST THE TAPE
They’re both free, and I hope you’ll keep them handy the next time something fabulous starts following you on Pinterest or Instagram.
Especially if it’s 2 a.m.
Because apparently that’s when the fabric looks particularly good.
Please let me know if you have questions or have a shopping story to share.