I like to shop online (shocker). I’m not talking about frivolous purchases, but stuff the house really needs— groceries, lightbulbs, socks, dog food— I buy it all while sitting at my desk. Okay, I am also talking about frivolous purchases like this and this, because hey, a girl can only be so disciplined.
Shopping online saves me gas, sanity, and from the worst phrase any time-starved person can hear: Oooh sorry, we’re out of stock. And, in spite of online retailers’ best efforts, for me, it’s the best way to just buy what I need and get out (avoiding that “I went into Target for some toilet paper and came out with a sweater set, a set of steak knives, and an ottoman” situation).
This is all well and good, until the amount of online purchasing you’re doing starts to become too much to handle. I confess that I recently discovered that something I ordered in March never came. I ordered it in March, it never came, and I didn’t notice til June. It got lost in the shuffle of Amazon Fresh groceries, Birkenstocks from Zappos, and my daughter’s Gap pajamas. Clearly, I needed help.
I’m thrilled to report that just as I was fully absorbing the severity of my problem, I was approached by Slice to help them .
I have talked about Slice before, and had actually just featured it in a digital series I’m about to launch with uLive (which I can’t wait to show you!), but hadn’t used it in a while. I and was instantly reminded of how valuable it is and how desperately I need a digital shopping assistant.
The Slice app does a number of things. You give it your email address, and permission to (safely and securely) mine your inbox for anything that looks like a receipt. Magically, it identifies all your purchases, organizes them for you, and pulls all the tracking information so that you know your yoga pants are arriving tomorrow, but your wide leg pants are still six days away. But that’s just the start: It will also let you know if anything you’ve purchased in the past has been recalled, and if anything you’ve bought has dropped in price so you can get some money back from the retailer. Zappos does this to me all the time— shoes seem to instantly go on sale, like, two days after I buy them, and I’d never know if it weren’t for the Slice app telling me so.
New features include the all-too-sobering “Slice & Dice” feature, a game-like analysis of my online spending using cute bubbles that tell me all kinds of things I don’t want to know, like how much I spent on a cashmere last winter, or whether or not my Madewell addiction needs treatment.
If you’re doing more and more of your shopping online, I highly support it. It’s a quick and efficient way to get what you need and get on with your day. You just might need a shopping assistant like Slice, and you can (Android and Web versions are available too).
This post is sponsored by Slice, but as usual all opinions and thoughts are my own.
