Re: OT: Search tricks?

On 8/22/2024 1:48 AM, Wanderer wrote:

But, an etailer's site sells THEIR products, not items "advertised"
for other vendors.

 They're screwing up the search price low to high feature. You get 10 pages of 10 cent
doodads that have nothing to do with what you looking for peppered with the expensive
featured items. Last time at Amazon, I couldn't find the selection for best fit. It was
just Featured, Low to High and High to Low.
 I wonder if you can get ChatGPT or other AI to help search. I haven't played with any of them,
cause I'm not sure I trust them.

Vendors show a great deal of disdain for their customers.
I've grown tired of having to chase down items in brick-n-mortal
sites:  "It was HERE, last week; now WHERE have you moved it?
Why do I have to wander around looking for it OR try to flag
down an employee so HE can do that for me?"
[Of course, they want you to "explore" the store to possibly stumble
on something else you didn't "KNOW" you wanted.  "Sorry, my time is
worth too much to waste because of your deliberate efforts to waste it!"]
So, we've adopted a simple strategy:  if you can't EASILY find what
you want, put it on the list for some other store.  (we have preprinted
shopping lists so we can just circle the items we need on this trip
and write the name of the store on the top of the sheet -- instead of
having to handwrite lists which always tend to have the same items)
Eventually, we find ourselves only buying one or two items from a
particular store (e.g., yesterday, I bought cherry tomatoes and bulk
coffee from sprouts because they are a "sole source" for those
particular items; previously we would actually *shop* there) and our
visits become correspondingly infrequent.  Eventually, we just stop,
altogether.  (Of course, having lots of local choices nearby makes
this easier)
It's also fun to tell the cashier, who rhetorically asks, "Did you
find everything you were looking for?"  "No; we'll buy those other
items elsewhere..."   (they aren't expecting such a candid answer)