Last year, I decided to buy glasses from Warby Parker. Buying glasses online? Let’s try it. What could be the harm?
Prescription in hand, I Googled “Warby Parker,” clicked on the link, proceeded to input my information and choose between some basic lenses that would fit my face shape.
When I got the glasses - packaging and case in the electric blue color that Warby Parker has branded so well - they were totally blurry. I wear progressives, but there was no part of that lens through which I could see anything.
I decided to head to the one Warby Parker store in Las Vegas, on the other side of town - which is only a half hour away. (I used to live, and still spend time, in Chicago, where it takes a half hour to drive two miles.)
When I walked into the store, I described my issue to this incredibly friendly person, who expressed dismay that Warby Parker had so badly messed up my prescription. She asked to see the glasses. I pulled out the case, and handed them to her.
“These are not our glasses,” she said.
“What! I bought them from Warby Parker online.”
“These are from Glasses USA.”
I immediately knew what had happened.
When I clicked on the link that came up when I Googled, it was a sponsored link to Glasses USA. I didn’t notice the sponsor label when I clicked. I was watching the January 6 hearings while I Googled, and just clicked.
I did notice when I was on their website that it said “Glasses USA,” but I had, not that long before, ordered tickets for a Broadway show through a site with “Broadway” in its name, and ended up on Seat Geek. Recently, before my daughters and I went to New York, I bought tickets again and noticed the same thing happened. Clearly, Seat Geek is the contracted ticketing agent to other branded websites. Or it’s all the same business, but it has different DBAs to capture a wider audience.
The idea that Warby Parker was a DBA of Glasses USA seemed sensical to me.
After all, I got to the site by Googling “Warby Parker.”
I know what you’re thinking. “You’re an idiot, Carrie.”
There have been many times in my life - but especially in the last 20 years - when I have felt like a total idiot for this very kind of transgression - or almost transgression that I caught at the last minute. And certainly, standing in that Warby Parker store was a lesson in handling embarrassment.
But this is something that all of us have faced with increasing frequency since the dawn of online shopping.
It’s designed to trick us.
That’s why Glasses USA uses the same exact electric blue that Warby Parker does. It’s why, when people Google Warby Parker, the first (3!) links that come up are from Glasses USA. They pay for that result to that particular search term.
And Google lets them.
Hey, Big Spender
The other day, I wanted to see if there was a subscription tracking template for Airtable, which I use for podcast projects. So I Googled “Airtable subscription tracking,” and this is what came up as the first option.
Gotta give ‘em props for Chutzpah. But does this really work? It’s like heading out on a blind date, opening the dating app to check out her picture one more time so you can recognize her, and then getting a notice saying, “I’m so much better than her. Go on a date with me.”
Even more frustrating, before I got to an Airtable link, I had to scroll past a link for Quickbase, and another for Raklet, and another for Notion.
I didn’t ask for any of these. I just wanted a quick link to Airtable’s stock of templates.
Chasing an Appointment
OK, one more example. My father wanted to make an appointment with his bank - Chase. He asked for my help. Because, at 84, he thinks he is too stupid for the web. We looked up the Chase branch he goes to. We called the branch number. The voice recording for the branch number told us to go to a website to make an appointment. It turned out to be Chase’s generic website, and I’ll be damned if I could figure out where the hell to make an in-person appointment at his specific branch.
So we drove to the branch. And got an appointment for the next week.
And this is where I got mad. My father thinks that this web stuff is just beyond him. How many other people think they’re idiots because businesses make it so hard to do something as simple as make an appointment to talk about the accounts you already have with them?
Undifferentiated Junk
Amanda Mull wrote a piece a few months ago in The Atlantic on The Death of the Smart Shopper. Her premise is that the marketplace has always been an endeavor to trick the buyer. But that the web has supercharged that interaction, making “buyer beware” almost impossible.
“What’s abundant lately is undifferentiated junk,” writes Mull. “In these conditions, understanding what it is you’re buying, where it came from, and what you can expect of it is a fool’s errand.”
When I read that piece in February, I was in the midst of an organizing spurt, inspired by finally getting my beloved oak bookcases out of storage and getting my office and bathroom in order.
One of the things I noticed is that often I would order something that would come in a package a lot smaller than I thought it would. The pictures on Amazon don’t give a sense of scale. Yes, there are measurements, but often you have to search a bit to find them. And even then - unless you are spatially gifted - it doesn’t help. I don’t want to see the product in isolation. I want to see it next to a bed or a TV or a toilet.
More than once, I have built a crude cardboard model to get a sense of how big - or, really, small - the product I was considering actually was. And more than once, I went to The Container Store to look at said product in person.
In May, the Atlantic’s Jacob Stern riffed off of Mull’s piece by asserting that while online shopping might be bad, “reserving a hotel room is excruciating.”
The problem, as he lays it out, is dynamic pricing, which means that a hotel room that cost $200 one day, can be $375 the next. More to the point, a hotel room that is advertised at $200 can be $375 (or more!) the moment you click on it.
As Mull wrote, “…marketers, salespeople, and retailers are free to foster a casual relationship with the truth in ways that those without the benefit of rarefied legal training might describe as lying.”
Decision Fatigue
About a decade ago, President Obama made headlines for his closet, which was full of identical blue and gray suits. “I’m trying to pare down decisions,” Obama told Vanity Fair. “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
My first thought when I heard this was, “Oh, so nice to be a MAN.” But, then I realized that I do the same thing. Except my identical uniform is jeans and a t-shirt.
Psychologists call what Obama was talking about decision fatigue - the idea that the more decisions you make throughout your day, the lower your ability to make decisions as the day wears on. As Fast Company noted: “it’s why shopping for groceries can be so exhausting and judges give harsher rulings later in the day.”
Businesses that advertise on Google count on decision fatigue.
And it’s making us angry.
Part of the reason the “don’t trust institutions” argument has taken hold among people on the right and the left is because in the last few decades, we have all felt taken advantage of by institutions.
There’s that extra fee on your cell phone bill that has a specious name designed to make you think it’s something other than cell phone companies charging more than the agreed-upon price.
There’s the health insurance you bought that doesn’t cover your particular illness because that required a different rider and you should have known you were going to get that illness.
There’s the phone call you make to your insurance company where you end up repeating 50 times, “I want to speak to a person!”
We all feel like hurdles have been thrown in our way for things that used to be more straightforward. And that someone is sitting in the stands laughing at us as we fall on our faces.
I very much believe that the anger that permeates our society today is partially caused by a constant accumulation of those small (and sometimes large) hurdles. We are tired of the vigilance we must keep when we ask for something, and then someone - or some site - tries to give us something else.
We are all suffering from decision fatigue. And it is harming us collectively.
When we talk about “the simple life,” we think about a cabin in the woods, or a house on some secluded shore. We think about disconnecting from technology. But it’s not the technology, itself, that is the problem. It’s the way that its purveyors intentionally complicate our lives - make us feel that if we are not on constant alert, we will be taken advantage of. And we will think it is our fault.
It’s like we’re all mentally crouching in that familiar “sports ready” position for 16 hours a day, and it is exacting a mental toll.
As for my glasses, after I reiterated that I wanted Warby Parker’s product, the very nice woman at the store took my prescription and asked me to make one decision - pick out a set of frames, which I did pretty easily. The cost was the same as the Glasses U.S.A. ones, and I was able to return those wrong glasses and get my money back. So yay.
Also, these are the best progressive lenses I have ever worn.
When I made that initial purchase, I did not get clarity from Glasses U.S.A., or from Google. On purpose. And I had to lose time in order to be able to see that. Ultimately, though, the entire experience helped me understand a great deal about our world.
But for my new prescription, I’ll be on guard.
I wish someone would pass a law that forbids automatic renewal on subscriptions. You sign up for something to try it out, think it might be OK but maybe not worth all that money, and then before you know it it has auto renewed and you have been charged for it. I think somewhere an email needs to be sent with a button to APPROVE the renewal charge.
Thank you for confirming that we really aren't going crazy. We need more "time outs" throughout the day. I feel better already!