I'm a online shopaholic

I love to shop online! Not only is it convenient and you can browse through the stores for hours, make online shopping carts and update and remove items freely during couple of days and when you have made your final decision you hit submit and a couple of days later everything end up right outside the door (hm... my daughter thinks the woman in the brown truck is the same as Santa but without the beard...). Or actually never shop at all, just pretending, it's just as fun. I subscribe to news on sales and discounts from all my favorite stores and actually save money when shopping (hm... my husband doesn't agree on this logic...).

In most US online stores you can have different shipping and billing addresses, and have things gift wrapped, thus easily send gifts to people. Perfect when you have two kids and work at home or sometimes knows exactly the perfect gift but don't know where to find it in the stores.

The number of times I've hit the stores over summer are easily calculated - heavily pregnant and a heat record (at one point 100F days for 11 days straight) in combination made online shopping great! (food shopping? that's why you have a husband to send out in the heat).

Now. Why is this so complicated when you want to buy something online in a Swedish store?? They still keep doing their "postförskott" ("cash on delivery") as a major billing method and hardly ever can you separate shipping address from billing and gift wrapping is unheard of. And delivery means the recipient get a note in the mail that they themselves have to go pick it up somewhere, usually the local ICA store (ie Safeway), which nowadays act like the postal office.

So friends and family back in Sweden tend to get flowers from me on their birthdays. Because at least the online flower stores knows that you hardly ever order flowers online to send to yourself and delivery at the door is sort part of the "usp".