If my experience is any indication, the typical shipping box from an online retailer is filled with a seemingly random assortment of packing material. Sometimes, you get those air-filled plastic bags, while in other cases it’s bubble wrap or brown craft paper. Many of these materials can be recycled, so I usually fold them up […]

Several weeks ago, I booked an airline ticket for a trip in early August. However, my plans changed, so I had to push the trip back to a later date. Everything went fine with changing the ticket, and I even received an email confirmation with all the revised details. A few days later, the airline […]

About a week ago, I bought a piece of clothing online that I’m really happy with. So, I decided to check which other colors it comes in. The item I have is a dark gray, and the product line appears to include a light gray and a black option. However, there’s no way to tell […]

I go through a lot of raisins, so it makes sense to buy them in bulk. Not too long ago, I placed an order for a few large bags, and they arrived in good shape. Fast forward a few months, and the retailer only carried the same product in “can” form. The price was about […]

Every time I place a grocery delivery order, there’s one part of the process that feels a little bit off. Specifically, when the driver gives me the receipt and asks for a signature, it takes me an uncomfortably long time to verify that the amount matches what I was expecting. I finally figured out what’s […]

When you’re shopping for clothing in a retail store, it’s fairly easy to try on an item to make sure it’s the right size. Since online shopping lacks this physical component, you generally have to make the same decision based on your prior experience with the brand, other customers’ reviews, and a very low-tech companion: […]

While walking through an otherwise drab hallway that connects two buildings, I noticed that the building managers had done something interesting: they put up large-format photos and converted the hallway into an art gallery. A sign nearby explained that the photos featured local scenes. While that statement was accurate, the images looked like the type […]

In what is presumably an effort to reduce the number of patients who make an appointment and then forget to show up, many doctors are using automated reminder systems. Typically, this takes the form of a phone call a few days before the appointment, in which a recorded voice asks you to confirm the date […]

A few days ago, my icemaker stopped working. I looked in the user manual and online for troubleshooting tips, but none of them brought it back to life. Thinking that replacement was the most likely remedy, I wanted to find out what a new unit would cost, aside from labor. But this proved to be […]

If you’ve spent any time reading the customer reviews on a typical website, then you’ve probably noticed that many of the reviews are a grammatical and stylistic mess. And it’s not just a matter of word count: even the shortest reviews tend to be full of errors. Taken together, the poor quality of the average […]