Online Shopping

Online shopping is becoming a part of most people’s lives. People are now using the internet to buy what they want, and it is delivered straight to their house. A survey of 2,000 adult shoppers showed that the most popular items bought were books, music and videos. The next most popular were electrical goods and then clothing.


Buying virtual items for real money is a big business. In World of Warcraft, a high level account called ‘Zeuzo’ was sold for £5,000. Many people earn a lot of money like this. All they have to do is create an account, train it to a high level, and sell it. The higher level the account is, the higher the price. It usually takes around six hundred hours to reach the highest level for an average person. That’s a long time, so people buy high level accounts instead of doing it for themselves. Now, account selling is very big, and the average price for an account is around £200. But account selling is against the rules of the games. The World of Warcraft creator has banned up to a hundred thousand accounts in a month for illegal gold trading or cheating. The ‘Zeuzo’ account was banned five days after it was sold. “Account selling is a ludicrous business indeed. I have friends who make good money without moving one finger,” the BBC was told by one player, “You can earn two hundred euros without doing anything.” The University of Indiana estimates that real money trade is worth around $300-$400m.

But there are some bad points in online shopping as well. Loretta Revell ordered £150 worth of groceries from Tesco because her 18 months old daughter was ill. But when it arrived, most of the fresh food was just one day away from the sell-by date. Tesco gave her a voucher to apologise. She was forced to take her daughter to the supermarket to buy fresh food. She said, “You cannot mess around with people, especially when babies’ food is involved. You would expect fresh food to be at least three or four days before its sell-by date.” But when she said that, the customer services became abusive. Tesco spokeswoman, Julie McGuckian, said, “All of our workers that pick the food that you order are trained to look for the code date which is the furthest away in all the products, and clearly in this case that hasn't happened. It is very rare for a situation like this to arise.”

Online shopping can be dangerous. You should only buy something if you trust the person you are buying from. If you don’t trust them, don’t buy from them.

By Menhaj Ahmed 13