Online

By Tiare Rath, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 7:01 PM ET Dec 11, 1998 Holidays '98 Personal Finance

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- You're looking forward to a holiday of peace. No honking horns, lines out the store door or grumpy salespeople.

This year, it's just going to be you, your mouse and your credit card.

But your quest for an easy Web shopping experience doesn't mean you should also be a lazy consumer. While online shopping is often more convenient than hitting a mall, that saved time gives you an opportunity to shop extensively and read the fine print in contracts - two things many consumers could overlook this holiday season.

Before even thinking about purchasing a product, your eyes should skim the screen for return policies, warranties and privacy disclaimers, according to consumer and Internet experts.

You don't want to be stuck with purchases if they don't work out, so make sure you can return the product, said Preston Gralla, author of the The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Shopping.

In addition, he said, watch out for charges you might be hit with for returning a product. A "restocking fee," as they're called, are most common with computer hardware products, Gralla said.

A concern for privacy advocates is that online shoppers aren't reading the privacy information from an e-tailer.

Many shopping sites, especially the larger ones, have purchasing protections through encryption, said Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based public interest research group that studies civil rights and privacy issues.

Despite his assertion that many sites do protect purchases, Rotenberg recommended buyers look for a key like this one:

This key symbolizes that transactions are protected and your credit card number won't be captured by a hacker. This key often shows up when you're about to make a purchase.

Shopping sites also request certain personal information, but you should give them only what's necessary, Rotenberg said. These necessary items are usually name, address and possibly email. But sometimes sites request, but don't require, additional personal data like how many members are in your family and your income.

"We generally recommend that people be a little cautious about giving that type of information because it's really not necessary to make the transaction," he said. Instead, the data are usually used for profiling, he said.

If you're still worried about online transactions, make sure there's a phone number on the site so you can talk to a live person, Gralla said. In addition, Trustee and the Better Business Bureau online track companies that adhere to their standards, he said.

There's more to buy out there than just books, CDs and software, even though those products seem to be the favorites of online shoppers. Not everyone will want or need a product that falls into one of the above categores, so it's important to shop around, said consumer shopping experts.

"They're taking the easy way out," said Eugene Fram, professor of marketing at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has researched time-compressed shopping and online retail. "People are comfortable with staple items that have little risk to them."

"If you really spend the time, you can really find these little odd-ball sites," Gralla said.

Some of his favorites include the Metropolitan Museum of Art's online shopping store; Deal A Day, which offers discounts on popular and designer clothing lines; PresentPicke, a site that lets you punch in the profile of the person you're shopping for and then spits out possible unique gift ideas; BottomDollar, which crawls other shopping sites to find the best deal on a particular product; and Etoys, a virtual toy store that gives a 50 percent discount off toys bought for charity.

One of the gifts that should be avoided are "collectors' items" like collectible Beanie Babies, Gralla advised. Putting down a few hundred bucks for a "collectible" toy you've never seen could turn out to be a poor investment, he said.

For book lovers, there is life beyond Amazon.com (AMZN) and BarnesandNoble.com. A book bargain site that searches 25 sites for the best-priced books is Acses. The site also includes the shipping and handling price before you hit the "order" key, so you know exactly what you're getting into.

A site that sells rare, out-of-print and used books is Alibris. First edition, historic and signed books -- including modern books still in print -- are offered through this site.

Gralla said Amazon gives the best book description and reviews; however, "You have to think where the information's coming from," he said. For example, publicists have been known to post positive "reader reviews" on bookstore Web sites.

"I think what you have to do is the equivalent of browsing in a bookstore," Gralla advised, by searching a number of sites.

In addition, Gralla warned the most prominent product on any site isn't necessarily the best product, but could instead of the result of a business deal between the site and the product.

Online shopping will often be more expensive than hitting the stores because of shipping costs. To lessen shipping costs, Gralla said you should make sure everything's shipped at once instead of having products shipped individually.

There are also some sites, like The Gap (GPS), that offer free shipping if you purchase a certain amount from their virtual stores. (The Gap's free shipping requires a $75 purchase and is only good through Dec. 15.)

Fram said shipping time from online retailers have improved significantly since their infant days. Shippers like FedEx (FDX), United Parcel Services and DHL offer vendors a place to store goods, so the company can fax in an order and have it on your doorstep the next day.

As we approah various holiday deadlines, however, Fram advised using high-reputable, well-known companies that have a history getting products to you on time.

"Whenever you get into a rush period, the facilities are stressed," he said.

But Gralla said just about any site will do overnight shipping and are often reliable about getting gifts on time.

"The shipping companies are pretty good," he said. "This is their bread and butter, especially this time of year."