Drawing upon her rich experience of life, Prudence (Prudie to her friends) responds to questions about manners, personal relations, politics, and other subjects. Please send your questions for publication to Prudence@slate.com. Queries should not exceed 200 words in length. Please indicate how you wish your letter to be signed, preferably including your location.
Prud,
I'm assisting a friend in wedding prep and have made a number of requests to Bloomingdale's for a digital version of the bridal registry. They offered to fax me information. I told them I don't do faxes anymore. Mike and Ellen, the to-be-wedded parties, are true digerati and have the expectation of electronic invitations with embedded links (to Bloomie's, for example) for this bicoastal event in June.
Do you think I'm expecting too much of Bloomie's? Their Web site is lame, and they don't seem to understand e-commerce in the e-world. I do not want to be impolite, but I do want them to understand the lucrativeness of this burgeoning market. Mike and Ellen's wedding helper needs your guidance.
--Wedded, digitally
Dear Wed,
Ah, yes, trouble with cybergifts. Prudie is sorry for your frustration with Bloomie's being behind the e-commerce curve. Would you feel better to know that they sometimes screw up their plain old-fashioned mail-order business? A friend of Prudie's ordered an expensive lamp as a wedding gift, and the embarrassed groom inquired why she had sent an embroidered footstool bearing the wrong initials.
In defense of some high-end retailers steering clear of the Web, Saks announced they were aborting their Net effort because the results were next to nil. This, the store believed, was due to the fact that catalogs show the merchandise more clearly and that selecting "things" is a touching and feeling exercise.
The Tish Baldridge part of Prudie's brain is a little put off by the idea of imbedded Web links to stores. This makes the invitation seem a little more like an invoice than usual. But by all means send Prudie's best to Mike and Ellen.
--Prudie, festively
