Are There Kosher Alternatives For Online Shopping? [#14863]

August 24, 2021

QUESTION:

In the hope of helping people avoid online shopping, I had an idea. I can compile an email list of businesses. A person can email whatever items he wants to order, providing his telephone number and email address. All the businesses will receive the emails and if any of them has the items they can email back the costumer and arrange the sale. Also, there is now a service which hires a goy to search for any items a person needs to find, and they charge a fee for this. A person would go on to a filtered site where he can’t see any images and click on the items that he wants to order. Are these viable solutions for kosher internet use?

ANSWER:

It needs to be thought about carefully, if using such a service will cause a person to increase online shopping or not. Using such a service might fix some issues with internet use, but at the same time it may bring more issues with internet use. I am not an expert in all the practical aspects of this and therefore it is hard to answer this if I am not aware of all the details of how it works.