Nathan and Emily, Online Shoppers
Their new toy
For Christmas, Santa completely surprised me with a Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new e-reader. It’s awesome. I’m already reading my fifth book since I got it just a few weeks ago. I love it.
One of my favorite features is the large touchscreen. It makes a great mini-tablet for playing on the web. My kids also enjoy playing with it. Needless to say, I try to keep it put up and away from busy little fingers as much as possible.
One recent Sunday, I was taking a nap. It was a great nap, and I was sound asleep. Nathan and Emily tried to wake me up to do something, but their efforts were in vain. Bored, they found my Kindle that I had mistakenly left out and started playing.
A few days later, I opened an older email account that I don’t check all that often. I use it mainly for signing up for things online to keep junk mail out of my regular account. I noticed a purchase from Amazon which I didn’t remember making. After opening the email and seeing that it was for a Melissa and Doug car carrier, I put two and two together. Nathan and Emily had made their first online purchase.
Since the Kindle is supported by Amazon, it has my Amazon account information. And since we have Amazon Prime, it even has the convenient 1-click purchase button all ready to go. So, when Nathan and Emily were playing around with my Kindle, they stumbled upon the Amazon app. Remembering all the toys I had purchased before Christmas, the recommendations category showed a number of other toys. Nathan and Emily found one that looked fun, clicked to look at it some more, and randomly hit some other buttons while on that page. And that’s all it took.
Returning it would have cost half what the toy cost in the first place, so they have a new, fun car carrier to play with. And my Kindle now has a password on it. My budget can only handle so many toy purchases a month.
Have your kids ever bought anything online? How did they do it?
