Sharp, but not as sharp as it could be
Written: Aug 31 '01 (Updated Sep 01 '01)
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The Bottom Line
Good selection of products. Good product descriptions. Pretty nice place to shop.
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| Full Review |
I recently had a chance to experience both the Sharper Image Online Store and Online Auction. Both were fairly pleasant experiences, but could have been better.
I was in the market for one of those Ionic Breeze machines and went to the online store to check prices. The first thing I noticed was that the site was pretty clean but seemed to have a lot going on. Not really cluttered, but just a little busy. There were many links for me to pick: "New Products", "Best Sellers" and "Sale", "Gift Guides", "Special Offers", "Customer Service", and "Auction Site." There were also 4-5 HOT products pictured prominently for me to choose from. Also present was a search function. It seemed like I should be able to find the Ionic Breeze fairly easily. But, it took me a minute to see the "Product Categories" pulldown at the top of the page.
After using the Product Categories pulldown to look at Home, Yard & Auto items, I found my Ionic Breeze right away. If it hadn't been on the first page of 10 items, I would have had to jump through 4 pages to find it. I guess if you want people to get wide exposure to your products, you force them to see your products by routing them through pages of pretty pictures in hopes that they'll bite. The Home, Yard & Auto category is divided into 13 sub categories of products, each with at least 20 products. This should make finding a product easy, but still may involve jumping from page to page before finding the right one. After browsing through these sub categories, I noticed that my Ionic Breeze showed up in many of them. Other products showed up multiple times as well.
Ok... I finally found my Ionic Breeze. I click on the pretty picture and am presented with a larger view of the product, a short description, ordering info, special offers, a pick for more info & pictures, a pick to submit a product review, a pick for a 3D view of the product, a pick to email the page to a friend, and a pick for the Dynamic Browser. These are all pretty self explanatory and they work as you'd expect, but this Dynamic Browser thing was something else. It opens up a new window and supposedly shows you other products that are somehow related to the one you're looking at. Didn't seem very useful to me, but I guess it's another way to get product exposure. So the short of it is that there's a lot of things to do on the product page... most of it you probably don't care about. I was intrigued by the submit a product review pick and went in search of a review on the Ionic Breeze... I still haven't found a way to look at reviews.
The price of my Ionic Breeze was displayed clearly at the top of the page. $349??? Oh, wait... there's a special... buy one for full price and get another one half off. Well, I may not want to spend that much money, but at least they told me up front about this special deal. After proceeding halfway through the checkout process, I realized I didn't really need to spend all that money. By the way, the checkout process was easy to get through and pretty straightforward (also secure.)
Sticker shock lead me to investigating the online auction. After signing up for the auction, I explored the site. On the home page they show a list of the hottest auctions of the day and the newest auctions as well. They have Flash Auctions which are hour long auctions, as well as standard auctions that run for days. They auction one of a kind products, new products, virtually new products and less than new products. You can choose to look at any of these categories. I wanted a new Ionic Breeze so I boinked on the new category. A new page opened up and displayed the first 13 items sorted by time left in the auction. You can also sort by name of product, SKU, retail price, and current bid. Sorting by product name, I paged through 5-6 pages of products before finding a batch of Ionic Breezes up for auction. Clicking on it brings up a new page showing time left in the auction, current bid, quantity available, and a long description of the product. Bidding is easy. Just input your bid amount, set your "Autobid", pick your quantity, enter your user name and password and you're off. You can see who's bidding at the bottom of the page and what their bid is as well. If you just choose to watch an item, you can choose to remember it in your profile. You can also email the auction to a friend.
Once you bid, you can go back to the auction home page and boink of the auction watch pick which will show you what auctions you're bidding on. Pretty nice feature. I won a new Ionic Breeze for $195. Not a bad savings. Shipping is based on winning bid price. You're stuck with ground shipping. Other options may be available via phone.
My only real problem with the whole experience was checking on the status of my order. Half the time I couldn't get any info because their server was down. The rest of the time my order profile was empty... like I never won the auction. My only reliable way to get info was to call the 800 number. I did get an email confirming my winning bid... luckily that had an order number on it that I could reference.
This review is way longer than I wanted to make it, so I'd better wrap up. To end: My package did arrive on time and without any problems, and I'm now enjoying my Ionic Breeze. I'm pretty happy with both online stores, although I wish they'd fixed their order status feature. Overall, I'm a satisfied customer and would use Sharper Image again.
It's important to note that this review does not cover the entire 'non-auction' online store from start to finish (ordering & delivery). I did not order anything from the regular store and so am unfamiliar with the shipping options that are available.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: N. California
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me: I'm an Industrial Design Engineer who loves technology and gadgets.
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