Online commerce has miraculous selections

Modern consumers' dependence upon the Internet was emphasized to me recently when I broke the carafe to our coffee maker. I had picked up the carafe when I bumped it against the kitchen counter, leaving a small hole that left the glass carafe worthless.

Twenty years ago, or even more recently, I would have gone back to the store where my wife had bought the coffee maker and asked whether it carried replacement carafes, but it wouldn't. It might carry a few generic, one-size-fits-all carafes for the most popular models. Ours was not the most popular model, but we loved its features and it made good coffee. We bought our coffee maker on a clearance sale, and the store might not even carry the brand any more. With few alternatives, I would be left with a worthless coffee maker that worked perfectly except for the lack of a carafe to hold the coffee.

Thanks to the Internet, however, I Googled the name brand of the coffee maker and quickly found an online store that sold the exact replacement carafe I needed, and the price was in line with the generic replacement carafes that wouldn't fit our brand. The shipping was as much as the carafe itself but still worth it. I placed the order online and had the new carafe — a perfect fit — within three-to-five business days.

This would not be possible without online commerce. You can lament the toll online stores have taken on neighborhood businesses (but I doubt that they are as detrimental to locally owned shops as big-box discount stores), but it's hard to argue with the convenience and nearly miraculous selection available.

My wife and I are not big-time Internet shoppers, but when you need a specific, rare item, online commerce makes products available you never would have found only a few years ago, and that's a good thing.