These perceptions, of course, come from a long-running family joke regarding where to shop for new clothes. I have been for many years a dedicated Eddie Bauer shopper, but my college-age son had his own ideas about buying clothes. For his September birthday a couple of years ago, we went back-to-school shopping at North Star mall and ended up in his clothier-of-choice: Abercrombie and Fitch. Here, for sixty dollars, you could buy a pair of khaki pants that looked like they belonged to your grandfather who took a swim in them, slept in them, and left them crumpled under his bed for the next sixty years. We stood in line for 15 minutes to use the dressing room, after which we spent another 15 minutes trying to get the attention of the ultra-cool cashier. My son is a well-built former all-city linebacker so I can only assume that my presence precipitated the snub. If I hadn’t been the one with the credit card, I probably would have been asked to wait outside.

I recently got my comeuppance from gods of sartorial coolness when my Eddie Bauer catalog arrived, featuring pants and shirts that looked suspiciously like they had been stolen from an Abercrombie and Fitch warehouse. They don’t have a thing I can wear to work, but maybe they can entice my son. I would be thankful if I could pay half as much for clothes that look like he slept in them.

The previous paragraphs might lead you to believe that I’m a seasoned shopper and I guess I am, except my shopping is usually not face-to-face. I do most of my personal shopping as well as my gift shopping online, so much, in fact that I have compiled a list of my favorite (and not-so-favorite) online vendors to share with you. Allow me to present my Online Hall of Fame and Shame awards.

Online Hall of Fame

The Award for Best Dress Shirts goes to Eddie Bauer. In spite of the fact that their casual clothes are a “Fitch,” EB offers a $50 dress shirt that is worth every penny. I bought several for my husband. When the shirts come out of the clothes dryer, the fabric has a beautiful sheen that looks as if the shirt has was just retrieved, starched and pressed, from the cleaners.

The Most Reliable Online Vendor Award also goes to Eddie Bauer. If they ever do get off their A&Fitch kick, I am sure that I’ll be able to expect their sizing, their shipping and their return policy to be as reliable as it has been for the past ten years.

The Best Place To Find Just About Anything Award goes to eBay. Thus far, I have found software, furniture, a lanyard, a set of teacup display holders and a ginger jar lamp, and have sold a book and an autographed picture of Brent Spiner.

The Heart In The Right Place Award also goes to eBay for refusing to give into pressure from big merchants to change the policies that favor small merchants. Businesses like e-bay are making the Internet the Great Equalizer. Let’s hope they stick to their guns in spite of the fact that “The eBay Elite” are now holding invitation-only meetings to plan strategies for further pressuring of eBay to favor them.

The Fastest Shipping Award goes to Lands End. An item ordered on Sunday usually arrives on Wednesday. Lands End also merits the Best Shopping for Tall People award, with their Yoga Pants (33-inch inseam) and the Best Customer Service award for giving me a $20 gift certificate because they ran out of purple flannel sheets before they filled my order, and for their return/exchange handling. They send postage-paid return shipping labels with orders, exchange items no matter when you bought them, and offer lightening-fast turnaround times for exchanges.

 The Best Clothes for Professional Women Award goes to Orvis.com with ColdwaterCreek.com a close second. Both feature classic clothes with a few quirky items for added interest. Wish I had a fortune to shop these two sites.

The Best Sport on the Web Award goes to J. B. McDonald & Son of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don’t have a URL, but if you search Google for “J. B. McDonald & Son” a link to a historical home once owned by its former proprietor will appear as the second link in the listing. The first link is my website. I got a kind e-mail from Ian McDonald, the Canadian J. B.’s great grandson, telling me that he enjoyed my website and wishes me the best. The Canadian J. B. McDonald & Son was a livery service that grew into a construction business but has since closed its doors.

The Best Place to Shop for a Daughter Who Lives in Brazil Award goes to Palm Digital Media. We’ve discovered that mailing anything to Brazil is amazingly expensive and transit takes weeks. Mailing books presents the problem of mailing them back when she returns to the States, since she can’t fit even a pamphlet in her roll-on or backpack (her only luggage.) But she loves to read and I am eager to provide her with reading material. On the Palm Digital Media website, I found a wide selection of books at very affordable prices, especially the classics. But affordable prices are only half the bargain. The site keeps a “library” of books that I have purchased, including clues to the codes I use to unlock the books once I get them on my Palm device or laptop. This allows me to purchase books in advance and read them when I get around to it, because I don’t have to worry about remembering the unlock codes or even what books I have purchased. I bought some books for my daughter and sent her to the site to download her books, so I didn’t even have to e-mail the files to her.

The Great Site If You Know What You Want Award goes to American Blinds and Wallpaper. If you’re looking for wallpaper, they have everything you can imagine, and then some, at affordable prices. I also bought name brand Venetian blinds (Levolor) and skylight shades (Hunter Douglas) using their measuring instructions and they fit perfectly. My only complaint is that I couldn’t run my hand over the wallpaper samples to get a feel for their texture.

The Great Site to Look for Flooring Award goes to Armstrong. I spent hours “virtually” decorating rooms with different patterns of flooring to determine if I really wanted terra cotta brick printed vinyl on my kitchen floor. Several other companies offer “interactive” decorating features, but Armstrong’s is the easiest and fastest to use.

The Best Site to Go When You Need a Camera and are Photographically Challenged Award goes to Click For Digital and Minolta. My husband bought me a Minolta Dimage shirt pocket camera whose size belies its power. With the addition of an extra battery and a couple of SD cards (the same type of expansion cards I can use on my Palm device) I’m taking movies of my Tai Chi master to use on a new tutorial, and finding that the quality is so good I usually get a keeper on my first try. (May I remind you, I am a worse-than-wretched photographer.) I don’t yet know the camera’s limitation on movie length. The last digital camera I tried making movies with stopped after 15 seconds. I filmed My Tai Chi master until he stopped performing at seven minutes, but the camera was still running. Still photos are even easier than movies, with excellent color. But the best feature is that the controls are very intuitive, a necessity for someone who is always inclined to hit the wrong button.

Online Hall of Shame

As you can tell, I love Internet shopping, and although I have had a few surprises and a couple of disappointments, I still think it’s the best place to shop. In fact, I have only one negative award to offer in my Hall of Shame, that award going to the site with the Worst Customer Service. The contest for this award ended in a tie between Amazon and Handspring. The tiebreaker is the fact that Handspring was recently bought by Palm.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a Handspring Prizm, which I loved. It was my first color PDA, had much more memory than my Palm VIIx, was expandable, and came with a free digital camera module that took surprisingly good pictures. My Prizm had only one problem: it had a faulty battery. After a while, I couldn’t turn the blasted thing on even when it sat it on the cradle or when I tried the Reset and Hard Reset features.

I e-mailed Handspring customer service, describing in detail my problem and my attempted fixes (per their “Frequently Asked Questions” page). I requested that they allow me to handle this problem via e-mail, since I am hearing-impaired. Customer Service OK’d my request and sent me instructions on what information to e-mail to them. I followed instructions to the letter, including all sorts of registration information and license numbers. In return I got a terse e-mail with a condescending message informing me that they didn’t handle such things via e-mail. The fallout is that my husband handled the issue over the phone, and instead of exchanging the device, as originally planned, we returned it and used the refund to buy a Palm. But, as I said, Handspring is out of the running, so…

The Worst Customer Service Award goes to Amazon. Amazon.com outdid even Handspring in the “jerks in customer service” arena. They sent me the wrong book. In an e-mail exchange, I complained about the substitution and they offered to send the correct book if I still needed it. I requested that they send it pronto. They sent me another e-mail saying that I did in fact order the wrong book, and under these circumstances, they didn’t accept returns, but they would be glad to allow me to sell my book on Amazon and purchase the correct one this time. I might have believed their claim if I had been trolling the Amazon site for titles when I bought the book. However, when seeking this book, I first went to the Peachpit Press website (Peachpit.com) where I searched for Elizabeth Castro’s “XML for the Worldwide Web”. When I found the book I was looking for, I clicked the “purchase” link. This link landed me on the product description at the Amazon site, where I clicked “add to cart”. How, then, did I end up ordering the “wrong” book?

Did I sell the book on Amazon and order the correct one? I’m too contrary for that. I ordered the “correct” book from Barnes & Noble. I put Amazon’s “incorrect” book into an E-Bay auction with an impassioned description of Amazon’s treachery. It sold. I lost money, but I did get some personal satisfaction.