How Do You Shop Our Site?

This is a work in progress! If you have any suggestions that we can add to these pages to help our customers shop, please send them with our comment form.

The easiest way to shop our website is to do some homework first. Try to visit local window treatment decorators or stores to get an idea of the manufacturer and/or product (cellular, mini-blind, wood blind, etc.) that you are interested in pricing.

Next, you can search the product in our search engine on the site for a quick search. Lets use cellular blinds as an example.

Now decide which product is right for you and click on the link. Lets take the cheapest blind

Our Brand Quick Ship Budget Cordless Cellular Light filtering

After clicking on the link it will take you to the build a blind page.

You will see many tabs that will help you decide on whether this product is for you or not. Once you have built your blind send it to your cart and you are on your way to receiving a well built blind from a quality online store like www.blindsexpress.com.

Below is interesting reading about general online shopping.

Shopping online doesn't have to be risky business if you use caution and common sense. This week we'll continue our series on consumer safety in the digital marketplace.

One of the main concerns associated with online shopping is privacy. Before conducting business on the Web, read the seller's fine print for their terms of conditions and privacy statement. You'd be surprised how many businesses collect the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of their clients and sell them to other online information brokers.

Where it goes from there is anyone's guess. Your information may be bought, sold and given away a hundred times more. You've officially become an online commodity, the consequences of which can be far reaching.

You might notice, for example, that after buying a book or CD online, your number of junk e-mails dramatically increases. It might be a trickle, or it could be a flood. You might also notice an increase in direct-mail advertising or, worse, calls from telemarketers. Much depends on the scruples of those involved.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no laws requiring online sellers to post privacy policies on their websites. Good sites don't try to hide anything from the buyer and voluntarily provide this information. The best sites, however, don't sell your information to anyone else and proudly say so right up front.

Even good sites that do share buyer information should give you the option of whether you'd like to participate, usually in the guise of other retailers selling similar products.

Don't always assume, however, that because a site posts privacy policies it is on the up-and-up.

A common practice is to blind you with such detailed and boring, let's face it, fine print that no sane person would dare to read it. They cover their bases and hope you don't have the desire to find hidden gotchas.

If you don't see any mention about privacy policies at the website of an online seller, think twice before you hand over personal information. If they tell you, in a direct or roundabout way, that they do share customer information, keep on surfing. That's the beauty of online shopping, competition is fierce and bad news travels fast among potential buyers, so only the honest sites survive.

Hopefully the laws and regulations will tighten on the growing concern of online consumer privacy.

For some good reading on this and other topics, visit the Better Business Bureau Online, at www.bbbonline.org.

A good way to avoid becoming an online commodity is to steer clear of cookies - small information files that many sites plant on your computer's hard drive.

In a perfect world, cookies can be nice because they retain personal preferences and other information used every time you visit a particular website.

Personally, I don't allow cookies on my machine because the probability for abuse is just too great. I don't like websites knowing what other sites I've visited or how often I visit them and so forth.

Marketers claim that cookies are useful for tailoring advertising content based on your web activity. That alone sends a red flag in my book.

From innocent cookies come adware, spyware, web bugs and more. I'd rather take the time to retype information each time I visit a site than have that information broadcast about the web in the form of cookie files.

I'm not in so much of a rush that I'd voluntarily compromise my personal security.

Do yourself a favor and put a halt to the cookie monster, via your web browser's security options. You can also employ third-party software applications that block incoming cookies and clean your system of those already planted.

Most full-featured anti-virus packages now offer cookie protection.