Ease of shopping
Taking time off work before Christmas has made me more aware of local shopping. A couple of issues strike me.
One issue is accessibility by car. I find that my choice of which store to use, or if to buy online, somewhat depends on if a store is located in the heart of a city center and is difficult to park near. My children and I have some ability to park far away and walk some distance with a backpack: from work in Dundee I can easily run personal errands on foot at lunchtime. But, accompanying less-able-bodied relatives, rather less so. Even Perth's main post office is now in the back of a WHSmith in the middle of a pedestrianized area: I pity those with many large packages to send. The larger department stores, at least those that remain open at all, also tend to be relatively inaccessible. A cheap, fast park and ride would help but those tend not to be offered: instead they are often poorly located, cost quite a lot for a family group and take a fair while for both waiting and journeying. It is thus no surprise that when shopping as a less-able-bodied group we tend to drive directly to stores like Asda and Tesco instead. At best, we complicate our schedule and split up: for example, when![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mst3kmoxie shops at Lidl on Friday morning I plan to have her drop me off at the edge of Perth's pedestrianized area so that I may deposit a couple of checks at my bank then I shall walk well under a mile to Lidl and meet her.
The other issue is availability of simple items. Stock levels are one thing: I remember switching to buying online from Zappos (before Amazon acquired them and they became expensive) after going to three different Walmarts that did not have the simple footwear I wanted in the correct size; Perth Asda even ran out of clotted cream yesterday. Even online ordering sometimes fails: I once attempted a substantial clothing order from Tesco that was wholly canceled because every item in my cart at checkout turned out to be unavailable.
A better initial target for improvement might be that of navigating changes in what retailers even try to stock. For instance, last week we found Farmfoods no longer stocking a kind of calamari thatmst3kmoxie likes. Or, as a more basic example, in recent weeks we have found Tesco no longer stocking canned pumpkin and Asda no longer stocking canned blackcurrants or gooseberries; I am also now having to hunt harder to find Asian pears. For that kind of basic foods question I would very much like to be able to easily ask some web search portal which local stores do still stock what I want. For very specific products I can sometimes track them down via manufacturers and distributors but these days it really ought to be easier than that: if a store stocks an item then one would imagine that they would rather like that fact to be easily discovered by locals; they might also like to know which items people search for fruitlessly.
One issue is accessibility by car. I find that my choice of which store to use, or if to buy online, somewhat depends on if a store is located in the heart of a city center and is difficult to park near. My children and I have some ability to park far away and walk some distance with a backpack: from work in Dundee I can easily run personal errands on foot at lunchtime. But, accompanying less-able-bodied relatives, rather less so. Even Perth's main post office is now in the back of a WHSmith in the middle of a pedestrianized area: I pity those with many large packages to send. The larger department stores, at least those that remain open at all, also tend to be relatively inaccessible. A cheap, fast park and ride would help but those tend not to be offered: instead they are often poorly located, cost quite a lot for a family group and take a fair while for both waiting and journeying. It is thus no surprise that when shopping as a less-able-bodied group we tend to drive directly to stores like Asda and Tesco instead. At best, we complicate our schedule and split up: for example, when
mst3kmoxie shops at Lidl on Friday morning I plan to have her drop me off at the edge of Perth's pedestrianized area so that I may deposit a couple of checks at my bank then I shall walk well under a mile to Lidl and meet her.The other issue is availability of simple items. Stock levels are one thing: I remember switching to buying online from Zappos (before Amazon acquired them and they became expensive) after going to three different Walmarts that did not have the simple footwear I wanted in the correct size; Perth Asda even ran out of clotted cream yesterday. Even online ordering sometimes fails: I once attempted a substantial clothing order from Tesco that was wholly canceled because every item in my cart at checkout turned out to be unavailable.
A better initial target for improvement might be that of navigating changes in what retailers even try to stock. For instance, last week we found Farmfoods no longer stocking a kind of calamari that
mst3kmoxie likes. Or, as a more basic example, in recent weeks we have found Tesco no longer stocking canned pumpkin and Asda no longer stocking canned blackcurrants or gooseberries; I am also now having to hunt harder to find Asian pears. For that kind of basic foods question I would very much like to be able to easily ask some web search portal which local stores do still stock what I want. For very specific products I can sometimes track them down via manufacturers and distributors but these days it really ought to be easier than that: if a store stocks an item then one would imagine that they would rather like that fact to be easily discovered by locals; they might also like to know which items people search for fruitlessly.