Hot Website: HauteLook

Have you heard about HauteLook.com yet? I forget the first time I heard about it, although there was a booth at the BlogHer Expo. It is a member's only website (free to sign up, they don't spam you at all) that offers great 48 hour sales on all kind of designer clothes, jewelry, home goods and kids stuff. I get an email once a day telling me what is on sale that day and I can click on the site and try and score 50% to 75% off. Pretty cool. They even have a new Sunday Farmer's Market feature for gourmet food items.

As a lover of designer clothes on a pauper budget I like getting a crack at great sales without having to spend hours scouring the internet on my own. So far I haven't bought anything through HauteLook, but I have been tempted several times. I also like that they send me one email a day letting me know about the latest brands on sale, and I can click or ignore as I choose. There has been no other spamming of any kind, so signing up didn't put my name on any kind of lists as far as I can tell.



Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest here, and tell you that if you click on this button and register for the site, I will get $3. I realize that this reads like a totally sponsored review, but I assure you, that $3 is the extent of my self interest in telling you about this site. The fact is I was a member of HauteLook long before I went to BlogHer and was given this offer, and I had planned to tell everyone about the site anyway.

Return This

There are many companies online that offer free returns on any purchases. However, they are taking steps to make this less convenient than it has been in the past. I am a big time online shopper, and I remember getting return labels included in the packaging whenever I received a purchase. this made it very easy to just reseal the box, affix the label and return my merchandise. Now, however, the trend seems to be to have customers print their own labels. The returns are still free - you just tattach the label and drop of your package at the Post Office or UPS, but I find the extra step of having to print a label super annoying. Not everyone has a printer, you know? Now if I want to return something I have to get my husband to print the label at work and bring it home - pretty inconvenient if I don't want him to know I bought anything in teh firs tplace (haha). Some places will mail you a label if you don't have a printer, meaning you have to wait a week or so to get your label so you can return those shoes that don't fit. Irritating. It really makes me not want to go through the hassle of returning anything, which I'm sure is their point, but in the end all it will result in is me shopping there less.

SATC

I saw the Sex and The City movie this weekend, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. They didn't push the envelope with the format, and most of the plotlines were just rehashed from the show, but so what? It perfectly captured the mood of the show and brought back that excitement of seeing a new episode for the first time. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what the big deal was about this show - it doesn't seem especially groundbreaking or important, but even without a rational explanation I admit that I got drawn in like everyone else and absolutely love it. Maybe it is just one of those perfect combinations of actors in the absolute right role for them that somehow creates magic - who knows? Whatever the reason, the show was certainly a phenomenon, and judging by the hordes of women waiting outside the theater (even in my small town where fashion isn't in the vernacular and the only shoes people splurge on are for hiking) the movie will be one as well. It is interesting that a movie that is essentially very frivolous can have such a heavy burden of being one of the only movies featuring women of a "certain age" as the stars. And possibly have to be an indicator of whether movies featuring only women can make money. Seems like pretty high expectations for a film that is basically about clothes, shoes and boys. Of course, I can't think of anything I like more than clothes and shoes. And since I won't be buying any $500 Manolos anytime soon, I think I can spend $7.25 (matinee price!) to watch other people wear them and just dream. It's all the glamour without the foot pain.

Nothing Like Some Good Old Fashioned Bad Customer Service To Make Your Day

I have a problem with Netflix. (I also have a problem with my shift key in that the left one fell off and every time I try to use the right one I hit enter but that is unrelated except in the fact that I published this entry 5 times whie still typing it). Anyway - Netflix is great - I love getting my movies in the mail, and don't really ever have an issue with planning in advance to watch movies rather than being able to go directly to the store and rent one. And since my subscription is always given to me as a gift, it is basically free to me which is great too (thanks Rees and Jen). However, they have some issues with how their gift redemption works. First of all, you can't redeem a new gift subscription while you are still using an old one - you have to wait until the old one is over. Technically you are supposed to be able to apply the new one within the final month, but that fails to work either. So you are left with the option of waiting until your subscription runs out and your credit card gets charged for one month so you can redeem the new gift subscription (which is how over the years I have ended up not being able to use my Christmas gift until May), or you can check back every day and hope that it finally gets accepted. That was the method I chose to utilize this year, and let me tell you how it went. After checking every day for a few weeks, I finally got an email from Netflix telling me the exact date my subscription would end (so now I can just wait for that email every year - yay). I tried on the day it ended - nothing. I tried first thing in the morning the day after it ended - and not only did it not work, but they had already charged my card. Pissed. Then - I learned another ridiculous fact about Netflix - they have no email communication. That's right folks, a company that is completely web based does not have a customer service contact email. Wicked awesome, right? So I had to call them about this issue, which thankfully was fixed right away. However, in order to refund my card the only way they had to fix it was to cancel my account and then just immediately reinstate it with the gift subscription. This seems like poor planning to me, but I said okay because the woman assured me that nothing would actually change on my account. Well, she was either stupid or a liar, because, as you might expect when an account is cancelled, so are all of the movies saved in the queue. Super pissed. So now I have to try and remember all of the random movies I once thought sounded good and put onto my list - which let me tell you is not my forte. It sometimes takes me weeks to remember new movies to put on there despite seeing ads for them several times a dayand reading Entertainment Weekly, weekly. So I am pretty disappointed with Netflix - not enough to stop using them just yet, but enough to hope that millions of people somehow read this and boycott, forcing them to rethink the ineptitude of their customer service. They should take a note from one of my favorite shopping websites, Zappos, which says right on its home page that it is a service company that just happens to sell shoes, bags, clothes, etc. Clearly, Netflix is a movie company that is trying its best to ignore the fact that it is on the web.

Rise and Shop

Well, it's here: the biggest shopping day of the year. When all of the stores open early for special sales, and legions of idiots line up to buy things that have been available for weeks and will still be available for weeks to come. Many of the stores have been advertising that they will open at 6 am, but two stores (Kohl's and JC Penney) have decided to get a jump on things by opening even earlier, at 4 am!!! Who seriously needs to buy Christmas presents so badly today that they are going to get up and go shopping at 4 am? Insane. If I was in charge of teh stores I would run a "sale" at that time and mark everything up by 15%. If people are so stupid as to get up that early than I want to take advantage of their sleep deprivation and limited reasoning skills to rip them off. They deserve it. As for me - I think I'll take advantage of the wonders of the internet to do all my shopping online where I never have to deal with lines or crowds or parking, and the stores are open 24 hours a day.

I Win?

While I enjoy the images involved (especially the somewhat chubby people riding horses), the current EBay campaign – shop victoriously – has me asking why we are so excited by paying the most. Doesn’t that just make us the biggest sucker? As an avid ebayer myself I understand the compulsion to win an auction – it is so easy to get drawn in to the bidding that you almost impulsively keep raising your price in hopes of winning. For most people this is probably more satisfying than actually purchasing the item in question. And the sense of loss when something slips away can be just as strong. I have found myself searching for new auctions of similar items after bidding on something I never actually planned on buying has ended – especially if the price was really low. Which is the appeal of EBay – that you can get great stuff for a good price. Of course, this doesn’t explain why there are so many auctions out there with people buying items for higher prices than retail. Are those people just stupid, or have they gotten caught in the thrall of “shopping victoriously?”