As a customer you have a responsibility to yourself, along with accountability.
If you go to the store or do your shopping online, you’re the one purchasing the product or service. You’re the one who’s going to take the item to the register or hit “add to cart” or “buy now” and continue to checkout.
Let’s use the store as first example: You find what you want, you see the price, you have the responsibility of making the decision to buy or not to buy. It’s actually very simple: buy it or leave it and go somewhere else. I don’t do a lot of shopping but I have yet to see someone man handle or force a customer to the register, force them to get out their cash or credit card and forcibly make them purchase an item. So, if you do purchase the product that means you decided to on your own free will, you’re responsible for that purchase.
Now, let’s take the online shopping experience:
You visit a website, you read the item description (hopefully you read it), you see the price, you add it to your cart and proceed to check out. You go through the 2 or 3 steps confirming your order, each time seeing the price of each item, seeing the total and agreeing to the total. You pay for your order without Big Bubba sitting at your computer forcing your fingers to hit the keyboard, nobody entered your payment information but you (after you agreed to prices multiple times during the check out process), and your order is then in processing stages. You wait for a few days and USPS brings you your box with your product in it, just as you ordered and from time of order to time of delivery is 3 days (wow that’s fast! some places make you wait up to two weeks and then delivery time too).
Then, all of a sudden you don’t agree with the prices for the products (even though they’re low to begin with and in line with what other companies charge, and even lower than some companies). You don’t agree with the order total, even though you agreed to it and saw it all at least 3 times during the check out process. Now, all of a sudden you want to put blame on someone (anyone other than yourself, I mean why is it your fault that you agreed to the order and paid for it?). I mean it’s not your fault that you didn’t read the product sizes and prices on the item description or in the cart or in the additional 2 or 3 stages of checkout. It’s not your fault you didn’t pay attention to this. Why act responsibly, and accept responsibility and be accountable for your actions.
Please be responsible: read, pay attention and be accountable & responsible for your shopping experiences and don’t blame any one other than yourself if you don’t.
Well said!!