What would you put in Room 101?

But they ARE new… even in real life shops, when you don’t buy the shoes you’ve tried, they put them back on the shelf.
Unless they, after they close the shop, incinerate alle the shoes that people tried during the day… :sweat_smile:

There also used to be this thing that had 3D scans of the insides of shoes so you could get a really good idea how they would fit compared to shoes you already owned. I forget what it was called, but Amazon bought it and now it’s become unusable.

Having them shipped directly to a pickup point near your home without at least one failed delivery attempt in between. :slight_smile:

I really like it when I can get things shipped to my local Kiala point, plus then I can buy a newspaper and/or a magazine there too. It’s a news/magazine store, you see.

:man_facepalming: you’re right! I’m so totally not into shopping that I assumed Zalando was an italian e-commerce site. It turns out it is a German-based big international store.
Anyway, I was referring to Zalando. To be precise, I’ve had experiences of return with both. With Zalando the box comes with a return label inside, the courier picks it up at your place and the return is free. With Amazon I had to print the label by myself, had to take the package to the post office, had to pay the shipment for the return.
Different policies, I guess.

Wow. You’re right! I didn’t know in Europe it was so. In Italy the law says you have 14 days of time in which any shop (online or physical) must accept your return without any condition.

I’m not sure that applies over here. Once, we wanted to buy a mirror from a shop we were in. The one on display was silver but we liked the look of the champagne version we’d seen online. We were told it can only be ordered online, because it was from a third party supplier. I asked if we could return it if we didn’t like it (because we hadn’t seen the champagne one in the flesh), and they said no, it was non-returnable. So no viewing window there. (We took a chance and it looks nice!)

Yeah, a lot of my friends are like that. I quite like shopping, plus I’m quite fussy :wink:

It’s not just about size, either – I want to look at the fabric and the quality. There are other things I’ll buy online for convenience, but not usually shoes or (fitted) clothes.

That doesn’t apply if there’s a middle man.

But also, just because someone says something doesn’t mean it’s true. :wink:

While I only buy shoes online (due to a lack of local selection as far as my preferences go), 90% of the junk materials in stores could at least in theory be filtered out by a decent online shopping frontend.

To my knowledge that doesn’t quite exist, but see e.g. Monitors vergelijken & kopen - Tweakers for what it’d look like.

C&A has a vague approximation of the principle. You can filter specifically for bio-cotton.

I’ve had the same experience with a small Czech shoe store from which I ordered a pair of shoes, for the record.

Last time I returned something to German Amazon (not Italian :wink: ) I did have to print my own label, which makes a lot of sense imo because most things arent’ (or shouldn’t be) returned, but shipping was free at the post office.

This is what I’m doing too (to support my local book stores). But it’s an additional “step”: I have to order the book in the shop/online and then I have to buy it the next day.

No. They are considered “used”.

That’s a different thing: In the shop you can see that the shoes are “used”. You can decide if you would like to buy that shoes. The online shop shows you a picture - but not from the shoes you actually get.

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To me that’s still not a guarantee – it’s not the same as having it in your hands. It might be made of ‘quality material’ but still put together shabbily.

I always forget that shop still exists outside of the UK. I used to get loads of stuff from there as a kid! I had a subjectively well cool Aztec shirt.

Interesting - we were laughed at if we wore C&A clothes in school …

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But Kate has +1 higher base of classiness so any negative appearel modificators are automatically overruled.

Why am I speaking RPG lingo all of a sudden?

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Well this was outside of school, and my circle didn’t give much of a crap about the latest fashion :sweat_smile: thank goodness.

I’m glad I’ve somehow given you that impression :joy:

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How can you be sure about this?
According to Wikipedia, due to its return policies, Zalando has more than 50% of its items returned. If they had to resell them as “used”, I think they’d have a problem.
And it’s the same for clothes: all the clothes you buy in physycal shops are tried by people. That doesn’t mean they are “used”.

EDIT:
Anyway, since I hate waste, and I wouldn’t accept that my returned items would be a waste of any kind, and since I find quite nonsense that a retailer should consider as “used” an item which has been tried once, I’ve done a research.
I’ve found and interesting article with an interview to Matteo Bovio from Zalando Italia.

you can have the article google translated into your language, but for your convenience I will sum it up:
Zalando, as a policy, encourage the returns as a “virtual fitting room”.
The returned items are examined, folded/ironed if needed, and re-sold as new.
In the vast majority of cases, according to Bovio, the returns are in mint conditions.
Only in “rare” cases, says Bovio, the returns have to be destroyed.

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I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, but I am saying that I’m wasting most of my time in stores discarding polyester and other artificial materials I hate.

Cotton/linen/hemp is basically my starting point.

You can buy all kinds of stuff at C&A — a fair bit of it quite good.

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Also in the matter of online shopping, I really like these things that I randomly came across in the Netherlands:

https://www.deonlinedrogist.nl/sirea-pure-drop-cachou-anijs-p-41556.html

They don’t seem to sell 'em around here, and online only in packs of 18… now one a month doesn’t seem excessive in principle, but I’m still on the fence.

Several TV documentaries.

Amazon had thrown away a lot of products (but stopped that after it was made public), other shops are selling the used stuff to traders. The latter ones are exporting the products to other countries (in Africa for example).

:door: no coverage in the bathroom

Edit: that could be read the wrong way…

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Before I clicked the spoiler I was gonna write that I´ll be sending an anchorman to report! :joy:

:joy: I should’ve left it for the joke setup!

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:door: low pressure showers

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