In this day and age, buying something from the Internet and having it shipped to your place of residence is pretty common. I know quite a few people who only buy stuff online, sometimes even their groceries, and have altogether bypassed going into physical stores if they can help it. I understand the sentiment, but I'm just not there yet. Despite having bought things online before, I generally have this hatred for buying something I can't use immediately. Even pre-ordering something has the same effect on me.
But I'm the odd one out here, I know that. Most people don't mind buying plenty of things online, especially from digital retailers like Amazon. Going into a big box store, checking out an item, and then buying it online and having it show up on your doorstep a few days later is apparently something people actually do on a regular basis. (Even if the item isn't cheaper online, mind you.) While that doesn't really make any sense to me, at least they're trying out the item before they buy it, so I guess that's something.
One of the things that I've always reinforced for anyone looking to buy a new gadget is that you try it out first, before you pull the trigger on any purchase. It's just safer that way, right? I'm not a fan of going through the hassle of returning things, so I'd just really prefer to be happy with what I buy the first time. That doesn't always happen, though.
It can happen frequently enough if you just buy without trying.
Look at Motorola. They really wanted you to try a Moto X, and they even offered up the device for only a penny for a (very) short period of time to get people to do it. It's a good idea, another one in a series of promotions for the device that's inevitably getting long-in-the-tooth. They gave a cheap option for people to try the Moto X, from their online store, before they pulled the trigger on the full price. That's pretty great if you ask me. Sure, you still have to go through the steps to return it if that's the route you're going, but at least you aren't out hundreds of dollars for any period of time.
Thinking about Motorola's deal got me thinking about times that I've purchased a phone online, or have otherwise had to order a phone and use it for the first time after I paid for it, and how often I've been burned by the effort. I've had plenty of devices that just didn't fit the bill over the years, but there has been only two that I can remember that really upset me. The first? BlackBerry's Storm handset.
Do you remember the original Storm? Back then, almost every flagship device was the "iPhone killer," and the Storm was no different. It boasted a touchscreen that actually moved, something that BlackBerry called SureType, and gave you a physical click every time you pressed a key. It was a great idea in theory, and worked well enough right off the bat . . . but then the novelty wore off really quickly, and suddenly the device revealed itself for what it was: pretty bad.
If that's not bad enough though, I fell for it twice. BlackBerry said they made plenty of improvements to their typing methodology with their BlackBerry Storm 2 and SurePress (instead of SureType!), and I listened. I wanted to believe, so I bought it and had it sent to my home. I actually disliked the Storm 2 more than the original one!
This may be way I don't like buying things before I try them.
So, I wanted to know from you what type of device you've tried in the past only after you bought it. A handset that went on sale for the first time online, before it landed in stores, and you jumped at the chance to have the newest flagship device even before you could use it. How did it go? Did you end up keeping it? Or was the experience terrible and you had to send it back? Which device let you down the most? Let me know!
