It’s Haiti v14 – On-line Shopping, Anyone?

     We take a lot of things for granted in the USA. It is instructive to reflect on how quickly things change and how, after some initial resistance, we become very used to a new way of doing things. The Internet Age provides many examples. We were initially suspicious about “on-line shopping”: going to a web site, choosing an item, entering in a credit card number, clicking and then expecting what we just purchased to arrive within a week via FedEx, UPS or USPS. I think Amazon was the game changer that led more and more people to embrace on-line shopping. It even quickly became a fixture of our post Thanksgiving Christmas gift buying frenzy. Early on in the Internet Age most people had Internet connections at work but not yet at home. So when people returned to work after the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, they booted up the computers in their office and started buying their Christmas gifts on-line. Cyber Monday was born. Now we think nothing of going on line and buying anything we want, any time, day or night.

     Internet access is available in Haiti but on-line retailing has not yet arrived. Some Haitian stores have a presence on the Web but they usually have bare bones layouts. For example, the few that have an on-line catalogue may not list prices, or don’t have a full listing of their inventory. Another interesting example is C&I Office Supplies. On a visit to their store in Delmas (a section of Port-au-Prince), a salesperson showed me their catalogue. I asked if the catalog was available on their web site (my rookie mistake was assuming that they had a web site). Yes, they said. When I asked for the web site address, they gave me their email address. They have no Web site. I sent them an email and asked for a copy of the catalogue. I received the catalogue, a 25 page pdf file. It had no prices. However, each image did have a clickable link. Wow! I thought, maybe they do have a web site but I just could not find it. I followed a link for an office chair. It took me to the web site for Valerio-Canez, a different store that sold the same item! I clicked on another chair. It took me to the web site for Office Star, another different store. I clicked on a third item. Same result. Apparently C&I Office Supplies created its catalogue by copying and pasting images of items that appeared in catalogues on web sites of other office supply stores. The images still had the hot-links embedded in them and they were not removed when C&I Office Supplies assembled its catalogue.

     I have not found a single store in Haiti that has an on-line shopping portal. Sometimes you can click on an item and save it to a virtual chopping cart, but you cannot buy the item on-line. When you check out, you are directed to fill out a form with your contact information and given the assurance that a representative will contact you within 24 hours to confirm your order and the price total.

     On-line shopping? Not yet. It’s Haiti.