Hey Finneyrock, I would like to point out that I am a local business, located in Washington, paying Washington taxes and supporting my local school, etc. However, I sell worldwide, 95% of my sales are outside the state, and 99% are over the internet. What I am doing is bringing money into the state. Now, I do buy a lot of stuff on-line, but not land, cars, boats, appliances, gasoline, utilities, home improvement stuff, things too heavy to ship, etc. Most of my money is spent right here.

Some of you mentioned shipping. The nearest place that I can get anything resembling the tackle I need is at Sportco, 142 mile round trip from Satsop. Even in my 20 mpg van, at $1.35 per gallon, costs me dang near 10 bucks in gas alone, let alone wear and tear, etc, and 3 hours driving time. I can get any reasonably sized box of tackle shipped to me for $7 or less. $100 plus orders I can get shipped free. Shipping is cheaper than driving there.

You want security in buying on-line, go to eBay. Either bid on items - can get a hell of a deal that way - or shop eBay Stores. eBay sellers have to comply with eBay policies or get their @ss booted out, which means no scams, no delays, full money back guarantee on everything, and every sale is fully insured by eBay if someone does rip you off. Costs to the customer are no more than anywhere else, and prices are usually reduced - I know I list items for between $10 and $50 less than retail at auction, just to get the bidding going, so if you watch auctions you can get great deals. I'm not an eBay employee, nor are they paying me to say any of this, I have just plain figured out that this is a real good deal for people with specialty products like mine. I have the world as a marketplace, I have no overhead for a storefront operation, and I can drastically cut my prices to match cuts in overhead and because of a large market share advantage. I can make you a better deal and so can lots of sellers on there. I guess the advantage to me if everyone starts using eBay more is that maybe they will hold the line on the auction fees that I have to pay