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Hello, welcome back to School's Out. Well, the holiday season is in full swing and many of us are turning to the internet for our shopping needs. Will you be among the consumers expected to spend $8 billion online this holiday season? Well, here to get us started in online shopping is the editor and publisher of the Cyber Scene, a weekly newsletter for Silicon Alley and beyond, Courtney Pulitzer.

Hey Courtney, welcome to School's Out. Hi, thanks.

So is online shopping safe? I know a lot of people are kind of worried about that.

It is. In fact, shopping online is almost safer than shopping offline, you know, giving your credit card number to someone over the phone or to a waiter in a restaurant. And there's other things that will let you know that it's a very safe experience. For instance, if you look at your browser and sometimes you'll see there's a little icon of a lock. When you see it with a closed lock, and sometimes there's a blue line around it depending on Netscape or Internet Explorer, that's when you'll know it's a little— that's when it's safer. And you'll see that as you've gone through and started making your transaction.

I see.

There's other sites that— and consumer advocacy programs that also help you know that it's a safe experience, like the Better Business Bureau is online. And if you see a site that has an icon, maybe we've got one here that shows like this trust or VeriSign. Those are sites that will post their policies so you can see what's going on and know exactly what you're getting into before you even make a purchase.

My mom shops online sometimes, and sometimes she worries that, like, is it the company? Like, when you order something online and I send, like, all the stuff to the company, and after they, you know, the gift is, like, how do you guys get all the, like, the gift ready? And, like, who do you give it to to send to, like, your house? Like, how's the shipping handled? Is that safe?

Well, that's, um, yeah, and that's sort of once you've placed an order, it's like when you do it over the phone or a catalog order. Um, you know, those companies have all those processes in place and their distribution channels and things like that. And that's the same as, um, if you, you know, went into the Gap and had something shipped anywhere else.

Now for—

go ahead.

Yeah, like, um, we, we recently bought some CDs over, I think, at like cdnow.com. And the problem is we set it up for, um, express next-day shipping. And it took about 3 or 4 days for them to process everything in the warehouse. And that's what we, at home, we find the downside to is all of the shipping charges and the length it takes for them to actually get it out to you.

Right. Well, sometimes, you know, if there's a product that's been backordered, then that will delay the product being shipped. There's other things you can do though with these comparison shoppers, which will help you see, you know, other stores online. There's a Uh, whoops, well, here's your website. Now, actually, a good one to check is dealtime.com. This one searches all sorts of things. There's another one called, um, DealPilot.

And so you just tell them what you're looking for and it goes and finds the best price?

Right, you can do it like anything you want.

Right, it'll find the best price. Um, and in fact, DealTime will send you reminders. Um, there's another one that's, um—

Do you find that they actually do a good job of finding a cheap price?

Yeah, they're very good. DealPilot searches just books. Music and movies, and they will come back with all of the other online stores that you've, that you could possibly buy this product at, and it will rate them on the prices, and then you actually can just go straight to that site and make the transaction.

What's the difference between like DealPilot and Bizrate where we were just talking about?

Well, Bizrate, that's a site that will actually rate the online stores. So it's a good place to start because you can go through here and, you know, for instance, if you're going to look for, you know, a CD or something, You can, let's see if we can find that here. But what you'll be able to do is, here you can CD Now and then do a search on how they're rated. So you can see.

Could you recommend like the best time to order online? Is it the same amount of time to get a package to your house if you order like a month before Christmas or like a week before Christmas?

Well, I think it's sort of like when you're shopping online or offline, it sort of depends on what inventory they have and, you know, the mail and things like that. I think it's probably safer to do a month in advance, but that's just in general. It's like anytime you're shopping, it's better to do it ahead of time.

Now, not all our viewers have credit cards. So now, what do you suggest for people who don't have credit cards? How can they shop online?

Well, actually, that's one of the great things about shopping online because, you know, for instance, if you don't have your own credit card, there's lots of sites that will, that will help you go ahead and still make a transaction. For instance, there's ICANBUY.com, which is a a site especially for teens. And this site, and then there's flooz.com, there's a bunch of sites that will actually let your parents put their credit card online and a certain allowance of money that then you can go and use to either buy things. With icanbuy.com, you can even make investments and play investment games and learn about investing or donate some of the money to a charity.

So it's like online currency.

Right, right. So flooz acts the same way. Instead of— with flooz, you submit your credit card one subscribes once to them, and then you buy the products with stores that use flooz. And so then you're spending, you know, like flooz bucks. And flooz actually is a word derived from like ancient Argentina or something.

Someone gave, someone sent me a gift of flooz, and I had no idea what it was.

That's what it is.

I went to it, and I went through, I think it was Tower Records that I ended up buying, using it. And it took so much longer than than just if we use the regular credit card to actually get it.

Really?

And even with it, not the shipping part, but it just, it took them longer to process the—

Well, you get a separate Fluz number, so there might be a few little glitches in there with different things like that. But, you know, they're all, all these sites are working very hard to try and get better and get a little more streamlined because they definitely want your business. Right. There's one other site called Beans, and let me go there since this one's taking a while to download.

A lot of people are also worried about online security, like privacy? Are these companies allowed to sell your personal information, like what you buy and stuff? Are they allowed to give that out?

Well, that's one of the things about when you're shopping online is that you can always go and check, you know, what is the company's policies. So for instance, let's see, if you go, you know, go back to Fluz or one of these sites, you know, they'll have— they'll list what their policies are and you'll see, are they going to sell my information? Are they going to give it to their advertisers? And then you can choose and opt in or opt out on whether you want to buy with them.

Right.

So, so they definitely, you know, they do, but it's the same as if you're buying something through a catalog, you know, L.L. Bean or something like that. You know, they have your information and it's sort of, you know, you have to be an educated consumer these days for anything.

So what are, quickly before we go, what are some of your favorite sites and tell us about your own site.

Okay, some of the sites I like is violet.com. They have really nice sort of candles and aromatherapy things. I actually really like buying my travel travel tickets through Expedia, um, and doing like airplane tickets, and that's pretty convenient.

It's pretty cheap.

Yeah. And then there's a few sites like Outpost.com which are good for computers and things like that.

Okay.

Um, my site is all about sort of the cyber scene and the internet industry from a sort of social perspective.

Right.

I'm actually starting to get some e-commerce in there too.

Is there a site that you could recommend for like maybe someone who's not so computer, uh, Smart and the easiest and fastest way to get your product or gift or whatever?

Yeah, you know, I would start with the ICanBuy.com and Bizrate.com. Between those two and then in doing a few searches, you'll be able to get a good sense of what's out there and you'll start getting a little more educated on sites that you feel that you can trust and places that you can make your initial transaction with.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Courtney, for joining us.

You're welcome.

Looks like we all better start our online shopping and get a— Get ahead on our holiday shopping. Right now I have to go over to the television monitor for the next round of the Instant Replay Giveaway.