A shopping expedition to the city happened maybe two or three times a year. The day began with a three-hour journey timed to hit the shops before opening time so that a full day could be had doing what had to be done. There were different categories of shopping that had to be accomplished in the day.

At one level there was the grocery shopping; usually a mad rush at the end of the day filling the boot of the car with long-life bulk stuff for the storeroom. Much of the goods had to share the back seat with us three kids. But the other categories were the killers. To my mum, shopping meant going into one shop and looking at stuff, trying on the clothes for fit and look, checking out the brands, picking it up and touching it, but not buying there just in case the shop down the street had better stuff at a better price. So we'd all have to dutifully march to that next shop. She didn't buy there either because she still had another shop to look in, just to compare their stuff. Ironically, it seems that any purchases that were finally made were at the first shop, so we all traipsed back to the first shop after we've been to the others. She is the ultimate comparison shopper.

It didn't necessarily stop there either. Sometimes the item she looked at in the first shop was gone by the time she got back, so we were then forced to follow the trail again and be happy with the lesser selection. This was the practice with clothes shopping, home wares shopping or entertainment shopping. The other category was personal services such as hairdressing. Usually this was a waiting game, where we waited on a street corner for what seemed like hours on end for my mum to show up with new hair some time considerably later than what was originally promised.

None of this is my idea of shopping. My idea of shopping is to decide what you want go to one place, suck the sales guy's brains out and then beat him down with a very large stick until you got the best price. And if you choose to ignore all marketing messages around that particular product category for, say two weeks or so after, then buyer's remorse doesn't even get a look in.

Of course comparison shopping online takes all of the pain away for any shopper like my mum. Just about everything you can ever imagine that's on sale anywhere can be looked at, compared and priced with a single mouse click or two. Okay, so you can't try the clothes on. But you can at least see where your fashion taste might lie before you start trekking from one end of Collins Street to the other and back again. You can see who's going to offer you the kind of service you might like. And because any good online shopping mall rates independent shopper's feedback on the products and vendors they feature, you can get a good sense of who's not up to par. And no one drops from exertion.

And for shoppers like me, you don't even have to get physical. In fact you don't even need to set eyes on the sales guy, you can be anonymous and still get the business done. It's beautiful. I can see the TV ads already...let your mouse do the clicking.

Kevin Price for Australian comparison online shopping service MyShopping.com.au.