Overstock.com Review

Shopping on-line has become one of my favorite past times in the last several years and during that time, I've experienced both the good and the bad of on- line shopping. One of the fairly decent experiences has been the web site Overstock.com, an on- line store with a wide variety of merchandise just waiting to be purchased.

Web Site Commentary:

Overstock.com is a nice, easy to use web service that sells dozens of different goods and often offers bargain prices on popular merchandise. I make on- line purchases all the time, and this is one of the places I make sure to check, to see if the price offered is the best one offered on the internet.

With Overstock.com, I have found that on many items, this site does offer a cost that's lower than average. The items I purchase most frequently on the internet would include books, CD's, and travel- related services. Comparing the prices of popular book titles to say, Amazon.com, I find that the majority of them are, indeed, a little bit less expensive if purchased through Overstock.com. The same is true of CD's. But with travel, I am usually able to find better prices elsewhere. The same can be said for electronics. It's a mixed bag with Overstock.com, which is why you need to check carefully as you surf each web site and compare not just the quoted price, but the overall, bottom- line price (with shipping and other charges factored in) to make sure you're getting the best deal.

This web site doesn't have the massive selection that you get in many other web services. It also doesn't have the best searching mechanism I've ever seen. Let's say for example that I'm looking for a magazine on home decorating. Magazines are lumped together in the same section as books. This means that my search is going to include both books and magazines relating to home decorating. This would be ok, except for one thing: there is no easy way to distinguish between the two. Thus, I have to keep clicking through pages and pages of search results until I find the magazine I'm looking for. One would think that entering a more specific title would help matters, but I'm afraid this isn't the case. You actually have better luck searching in this site if you use fewer words rather than more.

Overstock.com offers members the opportunity to post reviews of different items and to read reviews and comments left by other members. The reviews are very short and simple and often don't say very much at all. Another service offered by Overstock.com is an indicator that tells you what the chances are that your merchandise will be sold out quickly. This is shown on some but not all items in the site. I don't know how seriously I would take this. It could just be a gimmick to increase sales. Besides, no matter how popular an item might be, you can always find it someplace else on the web.

Bottom Line Viewpoint:

Overall, Overstock.com is an average on- line store. I'm satisfied with the merchandise I ordered through this service. My price was lower than with other sites and I received it at my doorstep in 4 working days, which was actually faster than promised. But I can also see how some shoppers could become very impatient with this site. The weak search function, the lack of a huge database of items to choose from, and the shipping charges make this a marginally- recommended web site. It's a hit or miss game and you need to make sure you compare the total cost between this and another on- line store before you make a purchase.