LET'S GO SHOPPING

If you haven't spent all your savings and gone into debt during a recent shopping spree, you can avoid the crowded malls and the shoppers crush at your desk with a cup of coffee or tea and your PC. 

It's remarkably simple. No time spent driving to the mall. No looking for a parking spot. No waiting in queues. Just point and click. At most sites you can easily narrow down your search to find the exact products, sizes and designs. 

Many people still believe that online shopping isn't safe. They're wrong. It's as safe as shopping in person. If you're still a dinosaur who hates credit cards and pays cash for everything, you can arrange to send a bank draft or a Western Union money order for your online purchases.

If you're a modern shopper, you can use your credit card as safely online as in person if you take a few steps to make sure that the sites you order from are secure.

Follow the guidelines offered by SafeShopping and you won't have anything to worry about. A comprehensive guide to safe shopping online with lots of great information about security, privacy, payment options, consumer rights, the site also provides useful information on how to complain if you're not satisfied with your purchases.

Just as in the offline world, some online retailers have better reputations than others. Three sites offer independent ratings for online retailers, each using different methods to assess reputation and reliability. The information they offer is essential if you're thinking of making a purchase from a retailer you've never done business with before.

1) If the vendors are in America, check the U.S. Better Business Bureau's safe shopping site to locate companies that are members of their local Better Business Bureau. Members pledge to meet the BBBOnLine Reliability standards for ethical online business practices and agree to resolve complaints using the BBB's dispute resolution program or a similar program. Companies must live up to these promises or lose the right to remain in the program. 

2) ePublicEye.com is an independent third party that allows consumers to rate e-businesses for reliability, privacy and customer satisfaction. The system is based on an interactive "seal and monitoring" feature that uses customer feedback to let consumers identify companies that are reliable and committed to customer satisfaction.

3) PlanetFeedback collects opinions reported by users through the site's letter-writing utility. To appear in Ratings, a company must have received a minimum of 50 letters from PlanetFeedback users in the last nine months. Ratings are based on the most recent compliments, complaints and suggestions sent to a company or industry (up to a total of 250) and are updated daily.

Once you've checked on the reliability of online vendors, you might want to know what other buyers and professional reviewers have to say about particular companies or products.

Epinions was one of the original sites to encourage consumers to review products that they've actually purchased and used. It's an open forum--Epinions does not decide what content to post and what not to post. This means you need to be somewhat careful about determining whether you think a particular reviewer is credible. Epinions allows users to rate reviewers, which is helpful, and also provides a mechanism that allows you to "trust" or "block" particular reviewers.

Like Epinions, ConsumerReview features reviews from "enthusiasts" who organize into communities, focusing on sporting goods and consumer electronics.

For an editorially selected collection of "best" reviews, both on and off the Internet, visit ConsumerSearch. Reviews are ranked according to how well they identify the category's best products. Editors then write up "Full Story" reports, analyzing whether the experts agree or disagree. 

Two sites have a wealth of information on online shopping along with links to other Web resources:

The first is ShoppingSpot.com, an editorially selected directory of high quality shopping resources on the Web. They feature price comparison tools, consumer information, product reviews, top retailers, coupons, deal finders, auctions, classifieds, malls and stores that give a portion of their proceeds to charity.

The well-known magazine, Consumer Reports has an online version. In addition to its product reviews, the site offers an e-Ratings Online Shopping Guide. Based on a systematic evaluation of specific features on selected sites in various categories, e-Ratings are ongoing, with new product, service, and information site reviews added regularly.

Unlike the other sites mentioned, most of the content on the Consumer Reports site is available only to subscribers, but you can select either a $24.00 yearly subscription or a month's pass for $4.95 if you only need access to the site on a short term basis.

Now we come to the chicken and egg question: should the shopping sites have come first before shopping security, reviews and price comparisons or should issues of online safety, quality and bargains precede shopping site listings? 

Hopefully, you've found some comfort in reading about the safety, quality and price check sources before visiting the shopping sites. Now, for the locations of some excellent bargains!

The Open Directory Project contains links to 121,228 shopping sites--more sites than a Web user could visit in a year. To make the shopper's job easier, they've organized the sites into 40 categories. If you'd prefer to do your searching in languages other than English, The Open Directory has the information in 40 different languages.

You can find 7,640 clothing sites alone in the Open Directory Project, and these are further broken down into Children's, Men's Teens and Women's links as well as by types of clothing.

Yahoo also features a list of shopping sites. They're also categorized by departments, with the 8 most popular first and 20 more to follow. 

Yahoo also has a "Help and Resources section" with links to some very useful pages for shoppers. One of these is the Yahoo Deal Center where you can find considerable savings on quality products in a number of different categories. 

Another helpful link is Yahoo's "research and Compare page, where the research has been done for you and price comparisons made on the pages. They also feature a Consumer Reports link with free general information and advice.

BizRate allows you to search for products from hundreds of online vendors. Features include merchant ratings, reviews, tax and shipping information.

For a source of 20,000 Web shopping sites and mail order catalogs with over 300 million product offerings, visit the Buyer's Index. The Index also has reliability indicators and a short description of each retailer.

MSN Shopping is one of the most popular shopping guides on the Web. They provide Buyer's Guides with tips and tools, editors' suggestions, and other features beyond the price comparisons offered by other sites.

Another extremely useful site for comparing product prices is DealTime. It's as easy as choosing a category or product, searching 100s of stores instantly, comparing prices and then connecting to the store that has what you want.

If you know what product you're interested in locating, Shopping.com is even easier to use. Simply type the name of the product into a search space and it will locate all of the outlets carrying the product. Along with photos of the items, the site includes brief descriptions, prices and links to reviews. It's even possible to sort the results by popularity, rating, price or any of 7 or 8 other features of the product.

ConsumerSearch, named "the best expert product review site on the Internet" by PC World has a large directory of products on its home page. You choose a category to start with, then find the best reviews, analyze their picks and identify the best product. 

Google has just launched a beta version of a new shopping search tool called Froogle  that the company claims is the most comprehensive product search engine available on the web. Froogle's emphasis is on helping users find products, rather than providing product information, reviews, and other associated information found on other shopping search services.

If your prime interest is price, don't miss PriceSCAN.com. Their stated goal is "to save you money and take the hassle out of shopping. Since they don't accept fees from vendors, they offer unbiased price and product information.

Not only does shopping online avoid the hassle of walking through malls and shops, it misses the crowds and lets you find the best prices. It also lets you choose the world's most reliable merchants.

Marilyn Monroe said that shopping was fun because it was such a feminine thing. Perhaps online shopping will also make it a male thing. They may not call it shopping though. Singer Cynthia Nelms said, "If men liked shopping, they'd call it research".