DATELINE–Los Angeles

It may be easy to buy products online, but what happens when you have to take something back to a store that doesn’t exist?

On the heels of the most successful online retailing season ever, one customer discovered the downside of e-commerce in the all-too-real town of Commerce, Calif., site of the warehouse for online megastore eToys.com.

Early in December, Gloria Zai, housewife and mother of five young boys, placed an order for nearly $1,400 worth of presents with eToys.com. It was the first time in nearly a decade that she and her husband, Eli, had finished their holiday shopping before Christmas Eve.

Less than a week later, Gloria’s dreamlike holiday season quickly turned into the nightmare before Christmas.

Although the shipment from eToys.com arrived a day ahead of schedule, it contained three Star Wars: X-wing Fighter Lego sets instead of the two Episode I: Anakin’s Pod Racers that the Zais had ordered. In addition, there had been a mix-up with an order of Pokémon figures. Bellsprout, Weepinbell, and Victreebel had been purchased, but instead four Dewgongs were shipped. All in all, the Zais received only a third of the items they ordered online, although they received 32 almost-correct products.

Almost, however, doesn’t cut it with little boys at Christmastime. With 12 days left before the big day, Gloria Zai carefully repackaged the wrong toys and returned them to eToys.com. Eight days later, she opened a second eToys.com shipment – only to discover that while most of her order had been correctly filled, there had been yet another Pokémon foul-up.

Desperate calls to the company’s 800 number followed, but in the end, a customer service supervisor gently broke the bad news: Yes, some of the correct Pokémons were in stock, but no, they could not be shipped in time. Distraught, Gloria scoured the eToys.com Web site, searching for an upper-level manager who might be able to grant her satisfaction. It was then that she discovered eToys.com was actually located near the Santa Monica airport, just a 30-minute drive from the Zais’ home in Van Nuys, Calif.

The next morning, with only three days left until Christmas, Mrs. Zai loaded the incorrect Pokémon order into her Chevy Suburban and headed for 3100 Ocean Park Blvd., the non-virtual home of eToys.com. Inside Suite 300, the exasperated mom eventually met with Jim Romans, director of inventory control. Confronted with a box of Pokémon figures, the befuddled financial analyst explained that there were no toys at the headquarters of eToys.com, just technical, financial, and marketing staff. The inventory, Romans said, is stored in a warehouse in nearby Commerce, Calif.

Determined not to return home without a Bellsprout, Weepinbell, and Victreebel in tow, Mrs. Zai drove through East Los Angeles to Peach Tree Street, the site of the eToys.com warehouse and shipping depot. But just minutes after her arrival, she learned that the eToys.com warehouse can only process requests placed via the Web. Although a shipping clerk was kind enough to let Mrs. Zai place a new order on his computer, she was informed online that her Pokémon would not come off the nearby shelves until Dec. 27.

Because the eToys.com warehouse is fully automated, Mrs. Zai subsequently learned, all orders must be filled in the exact sequence they are received. Unfortunately, Mrs. Zai’s order was number 1,217 in the electronic queue. The toys, only a few yards from her in the warehouse, might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

Mrs. Zai was able to come up with substitute gifts for her three youngest at a nearby mall. And last week, a cohort of Pokémons – including the coveted Bellsprout, Weepinbell, and Victreebel – arrived at the Zai household, courtesy of eToys.com, which also sent a personal apology from a corporate vice president. Still, Gloria Zai says she will not use the online vendor for holiday shopping next year.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I just need to know there’s a person behind a counter somewhere,” Mrs. Zai says.

DATELINE–Washington

While most newspapers and television news programs couldn’t say enough nice things about the AOL-Time Warner merger, key players are expressing concerns – off the record.

The anonymous remarks, collected at a password-protected section of the Columbia Journalism School’s alumni Web site, reflect a growing unease about the AOL-Time Warner deal among legislators, technology CEOs, and journalists themselves. Journalists covering the merger began posting the comments at the site shortly after last Monday’s announcement.

The comments were leaked to the alt.journalism Internet discussion group early yesterday. The Columbia Journalism School has since removed the Web page from its site. The following are select comments from the document posted to the Usenet newsgroup.

“What most consumers probably don’t realize is that they will have far fewer options online. If AOL-Time Warner doesn’t own the content, chances are it won’t be available on their Internet, and for most people, it just won’t be available period.” – Viacom programming executive to Variety

“They’ll call it the Internet but it won’t be. It’ll be interesting to see if consumers are satisfied with AOL’s sanitized version of the World Wide Web.” – Wired news reporter to the San Francisco Examiner

“It’s going to be $20 bucks a month for basic service and $100 bucks a month if you opt for the enhanced ‘with privacy’ package.” – AOL engineer to Salon.com.

“If this doesn’t violate current antitrust laws, then we need some new ones. I suspect someone in the current administration has muzzled the Justice Department on this one.” – A Republican sitting on the Senate Commerce Committee to the Washington Post

“Regardless of their new resources, we expect AOL will stand by its pledge to legislate open access to broadband networks.” – A high-level advisor to democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley to the Industry Standard

“Two years from now, will you be able to upload to the AOL-Time Warner Inc. Internet? No. Will you be able to say something negative about an AOL-TWI property in one of their chat rooms? No. What will you be able to do? Download their movies, read their magazines, and buy their music programming.” – CEO of national Internet service provider to The New York Times

“It’s the Anschluss all over again.” – Merrill Lynch Vice President to Dow Jones News Service

“Most of my fellow journalists covering this merger are more interested in the value of their present or future stockholdings than the impact that this vertical integration will most likely have on our profession.” – Reporter for the Christian Science Monitor to CNBC

“At [Herb Allen’s] Sun Valley retreat, Case went so far as to say, ‘We are closing in on our goal of merging entertainment and advertising into a single medium.’” – Well-known author to the New Yorker

DATELINE–New York

Katherine Isbister, an advertising representative with ClicMedia, used to field dozens of calls on her daily walk to and from work in New York City’s Silicon Alley. She boasts about the time she closed a quarter-million-dollar deal between pit stops at Starbucks and Max’s, her favorite bagel store. But these days, the 32-year-old Isbister refuses to do business “out in the open” and stores her mobile phone inside her purse while on the street.

No, Isbister is not ashamed to use her phone in public – she’s afraid. Although seldom mentioned by the media, pedestrians using mobile phones have become popular targets for robbery and assault. The New York City Police Department began to keep statistics on the number of assaults against mobile phone users in the late ’90s; that number has been rising. In July of 1999, Isbister was one of 40 New Yorkers singled out for attack because she was paying more attention to her telephone conversation than her surroundings.

“At first I thought it was one of my co-workers playing a joke on me,” recalls Isbister, who was walking through Washington Square at the time of the attack. “But then I hit a wall of pain and fell to the ground. I never even saw the guys who attacked me.”

Isbister, who lost her purse but, ironically, not her phone during the assault, tells a tale that is, apparently, all too typical. According to Lt. Eric DiMichele, an NYPD spokesman, most people who are attacked while using mobile phones are simply caught off-guard by the perpetrator.

“Even though the city is the safest it’s been in decades,” warns DiMichele, “people still have to use their common sense while walking down the street.” For years the police have warned would-be victims to walk with a purposeful stride, keep a watchful eye on the environment, and avoid poorly lit corridors.

Today that list of dos and don’ts has been updated to proscribe the use of personal stereos and mobile phones on city streets. “Anything that takes the citizen’s attention away from the immediate vicinity,” explains DiMichele, “is a potential threat to personal safety.”

According to an informal poll of metropolitan police agencies around the country, a person using a portable phone is now four times more likely to be assaulted than a non-phoner. Statistics also suggest that an attack against a mobile phone user is as likely to take place during the day as at night.

Public safety officials are hoping to increase public awareness of the dangers associated with pedestrian use of mobile phones by enlisting the aid of the wireless industry. Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson have all agreed to include special instructions on personal safety in their product manuals.

The campaign for mobile phone safety, however, finds itself against some ardent critics: the victims of cell-phone-related crime themselves. Last March, Steve Ballmer, the president of Microsoft, was assaulted in Boston while making a call to his wife, who was in Washington state at the time. It was Mrs. Ballmer who called the police.

Ballmer maintains that his use of a mobile phone did not lead to the robbery. “I was walking out of an expensive restaurant,” argues Ballmer, who lost his wallet and gained a bump on the head in the transaction, “so naturally I was a good mark. But if I hadn’t had my phone, there’s no way my wife could have called the police instantly – it might have saved me.”