A problem that kind of goes hand in hand with the shipping is how you will send the merchandise back if it doesn t work out for you. If you receive the wrong size or color, or the product just isn t what you thought it was, you are going to have to send it back. And most of the time that will cost additional shipping charges. Most companies don t issue you a credit if you have to send something back. Although sometimes, if you re lucky, the company that you ordered from has a location near you and you can return your mail-order merchandise to the store.
Traffic is also a disadvantage to shopping on the Net.
If you have ever tried to log onto a particular web site and you received a message saying that they were temporarily experiencing server problems and to try back later, you are not alone. I think that this has happened to almost everyone, but it doesn t make it any less frustrating. The main reason that web sites can t handle the traffic is because with the gain in interaction capabilities, they must also interoperate with more potential bottlenecks. Firewalls and switches must check out requests before releasing them to the Web server and application servers must first talk to back-end databases to determine a final destination. Each operation acts like a tollbooth on a highway, slowing down the speed at which the request can be made, said Dawne Shand of Computerworld magazine.