12-12-12: Great Online Shopping Festival

An Online Shopping Festival to shopaholics is what Sachin Tendulkar is to cricket fans. The feeling of shopaholics is aptly described in the following lines:

“You know that thing when you see someone cute and he smiles and your heart kind of goes like warm butter sliding down hot toast? Well that's what it's like when I see a store. Only it's better.”  -- Rebecca Bloomwood (Confessions of a Shopaholic)

And it would probably be BEST for Rebecca Bloomwood if she could shop online too. But well, if not her, the modern day Rebeccas' can. Don’t crib if you can’t go all the way to Dubai and enjoy the much celebrated Great Dubai Shopping Festival. If all your favourite retailers can just be a click away and deliver at your doorstep, can you possibly think of a better way to shop? And better yet, we the first-of-its-kind Great Online Shopping Festival slated for 12-12-12 (December 12, 2012) - a dream-come-true for all the shopaholics in India! For a change, you don’t have to get up early in the morning to rush to the malls in lieu of getting the best buy. This time all you need to do is click, click and click, and well, be quick at that!

But what is the Great Online Shopping Festival after all? Google India in collaboration with all the leading E-Commerce players has come up together with this brilliant concept. The historic day of 12/12/12 will see more than 50 E-Commerce, local and classified, online travel sites and BFSI industry offering their best deals to customers all over India. Customers will not just avail best bargains, they will also enjoy free shipping across India.

Aah! Now I see you wondering there, “But why must I go for online shopping at all? It involves debit/credit card details, isn’t it risky? What if I don’t like the fit or the material? What if it’s not authentic?” So many queries, but you need not worry. Online portals are not only convenient and handy, but safe too. Think of it this way - to shop in a generic way i.e. in a mall or a shopping complex, you take out time from work and household chores, get dressed, battle traffic, jostle for a parking spot and all to explore a mall Phew! But if you try shopping online, be it in your office or your home, all you need to do is log in to the internet and browse. From apparels to footwear, cosmetics to accessories, books to electronics, home and kitchen furnishings to jewellery, real estate to travel tickets and jobs too! It’s all here served on a platter for your convenience.

While I talk of convenience, it’s both pre and post shopping. For those of you who are apprehensive about online transactions, you need not worry much as the transactions take place over secure connections. For the extra cautious, you also get an option of cash-on-delivery. Also, most retailers have a 30-day exchange policy. If it doesn’t fit you well, you might just return it if unused. All the products and brands are absolutely authentic and apparently cheaper than the stores, since they save on store space and other overhead costs.

On December 12^th, watch out for discounted travel deals on domestic airfares, international airfares, holiday packages, hotels and more from MakeMyTrip.