Sharper Image Description
Sharper Image started 25 years ago when its current chairman
and founder, Richard Thalheimer, wanted to discover new products. Sharper
Image also invents some of its items by Sharper Image Design.
Sharperimage.com is the largest store of the company and works 24 hours
a day.
It is a website involved in the sales of a variety of electronic equipment.
The chairman of the company is always happy to receive comments about
anything
and everything that concerns Sharper Image and can be contacted at: Richard@sharperimage.com
Sharper Image Money Saving Offers
Free
Shipping on Electronics & Toys
15%
off your first order when you register at The Sharper Image.
Buy
one Ionic Breeze Quadra Silent Air Purifier, get a second one for 50% off.
Sharper Image Review
I recently had a chance to experience both the Sharper Image
Online Store and
Online Auction. Both were fairly pleasant experiences, but could have
been better.
I was in the market for one of those Ionic Breeze machines
and
went to the online store to check prices. The first thing I noticed was
that
the site was pretty clean but seemed to have a lot going on. Not really
cluttered,
but just a little busy. There were many links for me to pick: "New
Products",
"Best Sellers" and "Sale", "Gift Guides",
"Special
Offers", "Customer Service", and "Auction Site."
There
were also 4-5 HOT products pictured prominently for me to choose from.
Also
present was a search function. It seemed like I should be able to find
the Ionic
Breeze fairly easily. But, it took me a minute to see the "Product
Categories"
pulldown at the top of the page.
After using the Product Categories pulldown to look at Home,
Yard & Auto items, I found my Ionic Breeze right away. If it hadn't
been
on the first page of 10 items, I would have had to jump through 4 pages
to find
it. I guess if you want people to get wide exposure to your products,
you force
them to see your products by routing them through pages of pretty pictures
in
hopes that they'll bite. The Home, Yard & Auto category is divided
into
13 sub categories of products, each with at least 20 products. This should
make
finding a product easy, but still may involve jumping from page to page
before
that my Ionic Breeze showed up in many of them. Other products showed
up multiple times as well.
Ok... I finally found my Ionic Breeze. I click on the pretty
picture and am presented with a larger view of the product, a short description,
ordering info, special offers, a pick for more info & pictures, a
pick to
submit a product review, a pick for a 3D view of the product, a pick to
email
the page to a friend, and a pick for the Dynamic Browser. These are all
pretty
self explanatory and they work as you'd expect, but this Dynamic Browser
thing
was something else. It opens up a new window and supposedly shows you
other
products that are somehow related to the one you're looking at. Didn't
seem
very useful to me, but I guess it's another way to get product exposure.
So
the short of it is that there's a lot of things to do on the product page...
most of it you probably don't care about. I was intrigued by the submit
a product
review pick and went in search of a review on the Ionic Breeze... I still
haven't
found a way to look at reviews.
The price of my Ionic Breeze was displayed clearly at the
top
of the page. $349??? Oh, wait... there's a special... buy one for full
price
and get another one half off. Well, I may not want to spend that much
money,
but at least they told me up front about this special deal. After proceeding
halfway through the checkout process, I realized I didn't really need
to spend
all that money. By the way, the checkout process was easy to get through
and
pretty straightforward (also secure.)
Sticker shock lead me to investigating the online auction.
After
signing up for the auction, I explored the site. On the home page they
show
a list of the hottest auctions of the day and the newest auctions as well.
They
have Flash Auctions which are hour long auctions, as well as standard
auctions
that run for days. They auction one of a kind products, new products,
virtually
new products and less than new products. You can choose to look at any
of these
categories. I wanted a new Ionic Breeze so I boinked on the new category.
A
new page opened up and displayed the first 13 items sorted by time left
in the
auction. You can also sort by name of product, SKU, retail price, and
current
bid. Sorting by product name, I paged through 5-6 pages of products before
finding a batch of Ionic Breezes up for auction. Clicking on it brings
up a new page showing time left in the auction, current bid, quantity
available, and a long
description of the product. Bidding is easy. Just input your bid amount,
set
your "Autobid", pick your quantity, enter your user name and
password
and you're off. You can see who's bidding at the bottom of the page and
what
their bid is as well. If you just choose to watch an item, you can choose
to
remember it in your profile. You can also email the auction to a friend.
Once you bid, you can go back to the auction home page and
boink
of the auction watch pick which will show you what auctions you're bidding
on.
Pretty nice feature. I won a new Ionic Breeze for $195. Not a bad savings.
Shipping is based on winning bid price. You're stuck with ground shipping.
Other options may be available via phone.
My only real problem with the whole experience was checking
on the status of my order. Half the time I couldn't get any info because
their
server was down. The rest of the time my order profile was empty... like
I never
won the auction. My only reliable way to get info was to call the 800
number.
I did get an email confirming my winning bid... luckily that had an order
number
on it that I could reference.
This review is way longer than I wanted to make it, so I'd
better
wrap up. To end: My package did arrive on time and without any problems,
and
I'm now enjoying my Ionic Breeze. I'm pretty happy with both online stores,
although I wish they'd fixed their order status feature. Overall, I'm
a satisfied
customer and would use Sharper Image again.
It's important to note that this review does not cover the
entire
'non-auction' online store from start to finish (ordering & delivery).
I
did not order anything from the regular store and so am unfamiliar with
the
shipping options that are available.
Recommended
Yes
Blue Bishop is an affiliate of Sharper Image.