Online shopping mania

This is the very devil. People spend hours on browsing shopping sites, looking for bargains (which are often otherwise). They buy articles which they don’t need simply because they have got a ‘deal’.

Ever since my brother developed a taste for online shopping, I have been on tenterhooks. Parcels—large, medium and small—arrive at the oddest times. One may be eating or sleeping or watching a movie or talking on the phone when the doorbell rings. Because he is in a hurry to deliver the goods, I drop everything and rush to the door to relieve him of his burden.

This is only part of the problem. What you see online is not what you get. My brother has often been a victim. He orders things because they are cheap. Like the time he ordered 20 kgs of wheat flour. He must have thought I was opening an eatery! There are just two of us and even if we ate chappatis morning, noon and night, it would last us forever.

There was a cold wave and he ordered gloves and cap. When the articles arrived, the gloves were much too large and the cap resembled an Eskimo’s headgear. He could have had them exchanged but it was too much trouble, He palmed them off to some unsuspecting person (what the person did with it is anybody’s guess but what my brother doesn’t know can’t hurt him).

When I bought a pair of walking shoes which have served me well for five years and are still ln more or less mint condition, he accused me of being extravagant. He ordered a pair online for half the price plus a pair of slip ons free. He didn’t like the shoes and the slip ons were the wrong size!

Then there was the time he ordered two pairs of glare glasses. It was a buy-one-get-one-free scheme. He asked me to choose one. I bluntly said I didn’t want it, adding for good measure, “Did I ask you for it?” He was furious and said I was very rude but it was his own fault.

One would imagine he had learnt a lesson. But it hasn’t. He still orders online and continues to incur losses. Once, I asked him if he could not return the goods. He said, “I can but...” I knew it was too much trouble to do so. Much easier to find unsuspecting persons to give things to. At least it has prevented him from buying things I don’t want for me.