The mission: Buy the same seven items at a store and online. The outcome: Each shopping method has good points and bad, and neither is so superior that the other should be abandoned.

By SCOTT BARANCIK

Call me the Grinch Who Hates Shopping.

The Mall: Ruiner of Sundays. Threshold to madness. Your airtight hangars reek of scented soaps and candles. Your cavernous walls rattle with the shrieks of zombied parents and their wailing offspring.

Not long ago, the Internet promised misanthropes like me deliverance. Tentatively at first, we embraced this new tool, dipping our toes into Amazon.com, swimming out a bit further to Travelocity, perhaps even skinny-dipping into the endless sea of porn.

But five years after the unveiling of eBay, and almost a year after the shipping debacle of Christmas 1999, the question is: Just how far has e-shopping come in its battle with The Mall?

Armed by my editors with a $1,000 cash advance, I devised a shopping list of seven products and set out to buy two of each, one via my speedy office computer, the other at local stores.

My shopping mission accomplished, I've concluded that neither method is so superior that the other should be abandoned. They are complementary, with little in common except that both left me with a pounding headache.

The Web generally offers a wider selection, the occasional bargain and access to product reviews. Brick-and-mortar shopping is faster, more social, puts the goods into your hands immediately and has better return policies. You can even burn a calorie or two while doing it.

In short, today's best-prepared shoppers come armed with a mouse, a set of car keys and a phone.

Come shop with me to see what I mean.

* * *

Running shoes. I began my online search at Saucony.com, home page of the company that produces the Grid Jazz, my shoe of choice.

Because the site lacked an internal search engine, I couldn't hunt for the phrase "Grid Jazz." I clicked instead on the Product button. That produced a list of seven categories of shoes.

After methodically clicking on each, I finally discovered the Grid Jazz model. The ordering process was fairly straightforward, though it didn't offer a color choice.

Oh well, ring me up. The damage: $64.99 plus $6 for ground shipping, a total of $70.99. The shoes (in blue and yellow) arrived within three business days, about average for the seven items on my shopping list.

By contrast, my in-store quest to find Saucony's Grid Jazz shoes stubbed its toe. Limiting my search to several square miles of Tampa, I visited Foot Locker at WestShore Plaza Mall but was told they only had Saucony shoes for women. The Sports Authority across the street told me they wouldn't begin carrying Saucony until year-end.

Rather than waste more gas, I called two Finish Line stores on a cell phone from the mall's parking lot. After a seven-minute wait, the Citrus Park Town Center store said it was sold out. The store on W Dr. Martin Luther King Drive simply didn't carry them.

Out-of-print book. Thanks to the Internet, you don't have to stroll through the musty aisles of a used book store anymore to find an out-of-print treasure. But you may still want to.

My target book was Dummy by Ernest Tidyman, the true story of a deaf and mute man accused of murder. I leafed through the yellow pages and dialed the Almost New Book Store on Henderson Boulevard in Tampa. They didn't have the book. Next I called the Old Tampa Book Company in downtown Tampa. David Brown, the co-owner, checked his "true crime" shelves and quickly found a first-edition hardcover in excellent condition. Total time spent searching: five minutes.

I hopped in my car and drove the two minutes to Old Tampa, finding a parking space right in front of the store. Walking in, I inhaled the reassuring scent of aged leather. Co-owner Ellen Brown had the book in hand. But the transaction was anything but swift. The other customer there was a friend of mine, and Ellen and I got into an interesting conversation about the impact of the Internet on stores such as hers. Thirty minutes elapsed.

Did I regret the time spent? No way. But on a more rushed day, or with less pleasant company, I might have. The damage: $12 plus 81 cents sales tax, a total of $12.81.

My online search took twice as long, but I did find a less expensive, if cruddier, copy of the book.

A number of Web sites today offer to serve as middlemen between consumers and a network of used-book stores worldwide. Alibris.com found 103 copies of Dummy, the cheapest at $8 plus $2.95 shipping. For the heck of it, I decided to see what Amazon.com, the prince of new books, had to offer. Twelve copies of the book were available through zShops, its middleman service. The lease expensive was a $3 paperback that cost $4.95 to ship. I took it.

Video game console. Script for a horrifying video game: Newspaper reporter attempts to buy a Sega Dreamcast console online but encounters Orwellian return policies, nefarious merchants and useless search engines. First player to reach the Toys "R" Us parking lot wins.

You know how long it took me to walk from the parking lot at Toys "R" Us, locate Sega Dreamcast and buy it? Six minutes. I paid $149.99, plus $10.12 sales tax, for a total of $160.11.

By contrast, I spent an hour and 15 minutes online trying to find a fair deal. The search began at mySimon.com, one of several Web sites that offer comparison shopping services. Type in a product name and out come prices quoted by various merchants. Even better, mySimon.com rated each merchant on its customer service performance.

Great idea, poor execution.

MySimon.com's "hit list" for Sega Dreamcast failed to segregate consoles from game cartridges and other Sega accessories. It also didn't separate new from "refurbished" models. As for new consoles, top-rated DoubleDiscount.com offered the best price. But when I clicked the "Buy" button, I got one of those "page could not be found" messages. So much for the rating system.

I migrated to Sega's Web site, Sega.com, which offered the Dreamcast for $149.95 plus free ground shipping. No contest, I thought.

Before ordering, however, I checked the site's return policy (my editors expected most of their $1,000 advance back when my shopping was done). Customers not "completely satisfied" with their purchase, the policy said, could get a full refund. Naively, I assumed I would get to try the system once or twice to determine whether I was fully satisfied. But reading on, I saw that Sega offered refunds only for "unopened products."

Next I tried Yahoo.com's price-comparison service. The cheapest quote, at $119.99, turned out to be a liquidation price, with no refunds. Scratch that. Video Game Plaza, which had a top rating under Yahoo's five-star system, offered the console at $149.99 plus $7.44 shipping. But the refund policy was rife with misspellings, and the company did not list a phone number or e-mail address. Five stars, my asteroid.

Finally I chose a name from Yahoo's hit list that I recognized from the world of catalogs: J&R Music World. The company's return policy was murky, too. A call to its 800 number clarified the policy: If the box is opened, no refund. But I'd lost the will to search any longer. The cost: $149.99, plus $7.50 shipping, a total of $157.49.

Perfume. Who do you think would be better suited to pick out a fragrance for my wife: me or the Internet? We ran a test. My schnozz lost.

Having rarely bought perfume, I went to JCPenney and sought help from a saleswoman. That's when I discovered that perfume hawkers, like crazed wine connoisseurs, throw around words like spicy, musky and woodsy to describe smells.

After sampling about 20 cloying fragrances, everything started to smell the same. I closed my eyes and picked Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. A four-piece set went for $48, plus $3.24 tax, a total of $51.24. My wife hated it.

Online, I surfed to Ask.com, a search engine. After typing in a question about perfume, I was led to a site listing a number of online retailers, including FragranceNet.com. I loved this Web site. Shipping was free. Gift wrapping was free. The return policy was generous (30 days, no questions asked). The site even had a "fragrance finder."

I blindly answered its questions, and FragranceNet spat out a bunch of possibilities, from which I chose Bijan. A 1-ounce eau de toilette spray cost $29.05. My wife hated it.

But later that day, a colleague discovered a neat quiz on Redbook magazine's Web site (http://redbook.women.com/rb/time/quiz/b9frag13.htm).

My wife took the nine-question test. It included several curious queries, such as what animal she would most like to come back as (butterfly). I bought a small bottle of one of the recommended fragrances, Le Baiser de Lalique, for $14.

Glory be, she liked it.

Blue jeans. We decided to compare the experience of buying jeans at the Gap with buying them on Gap.com, the company's Web site.

In terms of selection, Gap.com was the clear winner. Take women's original-fit blue jeans. Gap.com offered six different finishes, including stone-washed, antique and black, at prices ranging from $19.99 to $48. At the Gap store in WestShore Plaza Mall, the only available finish was sandblasted, at $48.

Another neat feature: Gap.com lets you return or exchange clothes at any company store, as well as through the mail.

As for price, the story was mixed. Because Gap.com charged sales tax as well as shipping, it cost more to buy Gap jeans online than at a company store. On the other hand, Gap.com had close-out bargains the stores didn't. I bought my wife a pair of blasted original-fit jeans for $19.99, plus tax and shipping.

Digital camera. Once in a while you can nab a real bargain on the Internet. Rarely can you do so without giving something up in return.

That's what happened when I purchased an Olympus D-360L digital camera. Wal-Mart had charged me $302.83 for it, including tax, so I was surprised when a Web merchant offered the same camera at a 20 percent discount.

As usual, I carefully screened the company's return policy. As long as I didn't mar or open the original packaging, it seemed, I could get a full refund.

But when I tried to return the camera, the customer service agent at pcWonders.com sang a different tune, pointing to a page on the Web site that contradicted the page I'd read. In short, the company would gobble up a 15 percent restocking fee on my camera, regardless of the packaging's condition.

Oops. There went most of my 20 percent savings.

Suddenly, Wal-Mart was starting to look pretty good. Though finding a salesperson to help me was a challenge, the woman who eventually showed up couldn't have been nicer. She opened the box to show me that the battery and other parts were there. She even offered to let me try out the camera right there.

And her explanation of the return policy was pure gold: 90 days, no questions asked, whether or not the camera had been used.

Scooter. Before shopping for a blue Razor Scooter online, be sure to buy yourself a safety helmet. You'll be smacking your head against the wall in no time.

Because I'd heard there were a number of lower-quality knockoffs, I began my online search for the popular Razor Scooter by looking for the home page of its manufacturer.

But RazorScooters.com appeared to have been commandeered by an unrelated retailer. So I posed the question to the Ask.com search engine, "Who makes the Razor Scooter?" Ask.com told me where to find a recipe for the alcoholic drink "Scooter," and where to shop online for shaving razors. Quite helpful.

Eventually I located the manufacturer's Web site, RazorUSA.com. But the company doesn't sell directly to the consumer.

Next stop, the toy sites. Toys "R" Us' Web service, now a part of Amazon.com, charged $99.99 plus shipping. Annoyingly, it wouldn't tell me the shipping charge until after I entered my credit card number. The charge turned out to be $11.60, for a total cost of $111.59. I passed.

EToys also charged $99.99, though it wouldn't let me specify a color. Happily, though, eToys quoted a shipping charge ($5.95) before I entered a credit card number. No wonder Amazon hid its shipping cost. The damage at eToys: $105.94.

Offline, it took me four stores to find a blue Razor Scooter. Toys "R" Us on N Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa had some scooters in stock, but not in blue. Wal-Mart across the street sold only a less expensive scooter made by Huffy. FAO Schwarz at WestShore Plaza also was out of blue. Brookstone was not. I bought one there for $99.99 plus $6.68 tax, a total of $105.68.

Much to my joy, the Brookstone salesman even let me ride a scooter around the store.

Try doing that online.

Checkout line

In its infancy, online shopping promised relief from the madness, delays and poor service we'd come to expect from retail stores. It's come up short.

The irony is, many of us who hate shopping now spend more time at it than we ever would have at The Mall of Hell. It's easy to understand why.

In your average mall, there might be one or two stores selling cameras. Whether you decide to drive to a third store elsewhere will be based on rational factors: how much time you have to spare, what you might otherwise do with that time, how much money you think you might save and how badly you have to use the restroom. Economists call this the money value of time.

Online, however, there aren't just one or two more stores, but dozens. And you don't have to move an inch to reach them. For a while it may even seem fun to shop. That's why they call it "surfing," and not, say, "drowning."

But when you look up from the monitor to find that your head is aching, the sun has set and you haven't made a bit of progress, it's probably time to stop clicking.

* * *

There's always a flip side...

Shopping online

Pro: Dozens of merchants to choose from

Con: No idea who they are

* * *

Pro: No waiting in line

Con: Waiting online

* * *

Pro: No sales tax

Con: Shipping costs

* * *

Pro: Never have to get off your behind

Con: Could result in bedsores

Shopping at the mall

Pro: FAO Schwarz

Con: Hickory Farms

* * *

Pro: Immediate access to goods

Con: Carrying them

* * *

Pro: Human interaction

Con: Human interaction

* * *

Pro: Good return policies

Con: Customer Service window

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