Ear Plug Super Store

Full review
Would you believe that white noise machines are sold through a company called the Ear Plug Super Store?

Yeah, I guess I'd believe it too. But I'd never heard of them until they came up high in the search list through Froogle. Being lazy, I picked them as their items were the least expensive, and since I'd already missed the reasonable cutoff for Christmas delivery, I wasn't worried about shipping rates and speeds.

Welcome to the Home Page

The Ear Plug *Super* Store (henceforth EPSS) is part of the Yahoo! stores network, so their website is parked at store.yahoo.com/earplugstore/; they own www.earplugstore.com as well, which redirects you to this location.

Once there, I suppose there's one word to describe them: Busy. Links everywhere, a fat column of specials and products on the right-hand side, and a long specialized text column of product page choices on the left.

Clicking through the product links on the left side showed a wealth of options. Need ear plugs? You have three main categories (foam, reusable, assortment packs) and nearly a dozen special categories: musician plugs, travel plugs, custom plugs... good thing I have no need for ear plugs.

But dear lord, this store has a lot of products for sale. And a penchant for stock photography.

In Search Of...

What I needed was a machine to generate white noise. The walls aren't as soundproof as I'd like, and the neighbor gets up a little too early, judging by when NY1 starts talking (muffled) through the wall in the morning.

Yes, tuning the television to an unused station would do the same thing, but that's no solution. Plus, you know, you can sometimes get "rainforest" or "waves" in addition to pure white noise as sound choices, and sometimes you want to... pretend.

So into the breach we go.

[Let's be honest here, Froogle simply links you to the relevant product page. I decided to try and find the product as if I stumbled on the site from the outside.]

All the products dumped onto that front page are earplugs, which I suppose makes sense for them. Let's look at the menus. About halfway down the left-hand menu list is "White Noise". This looks promising. Surprise! You can buy CDs of white noise, or just buy a machine to produce it on demand. There are links above the modestly helpful table of pros and cons of CDs and machines.

Another click, more choices, more descriptions of various possible applications. I just want a machine! Ah, there they are, listed at the bottom. No prices, just links and little pictures. You can click each one in order if you like; each product detail page also lists the "related products" at the bottom, though not in a very readable format.

You can enlarge the picture in a new window, but it's only a minor improvement. The picture's usually fairly obvious.

Different product detail pages show different information below the main attraction; the in-ear white-noise solution, Sleep-Eze, offers the batteries or replacement parts on its detail page. The layout really appears to be haphazard, like wandering through the hardware store on the corner that's been there 75 years -- look around the aisle/page and there's something you never noticed before staring back at you every time.

Purchasing

This part was easy - a big relief. Clicking the big "Add to Cart" button under the price, in the box next to the "Email this page to a friend" link, brings up the standard Yahoo! store basket, which is secure and very well laid out. You can do all the basic things you might expect to do from a shopping cart from here, as well.

When you're ready to pay, you can check out, fill in the relevant details, choose a shipping method - the cost of shipping will appear in the little gray box detailing your purchases on the next page (entering your credit card number), so you can back up and fiddle with different methods - and finish up.

Shipping

For one $38.95 item, I was charged $8.80 for USPS Priority shipping. Playing around, if I had purchased four, the shipping didn't quite double, so the handling's apparently built into the first item's shipping. First Class shipping, listed as a 5-7 day ship method, was going to be exactly the same price as Priority Mail, a 2-3 day method, for some reason.

With other products, the shipping prices are where you'd expect, as well: buy a few packs of $9 ear plugs (they're really good), and the shipping is a mere $2.99 for First Class, or $6.80 using Priority Mail.

Express Mail (1-2 days) and a couple of International options are also offered.

The EPSS sends an email when the product is ready to ship; it's a generic email that does not know what you chose for a shipping method, so it says something along the lines of "Thank you for your recent purchase... see the table below for estimated delivery dates."

The white noise machine arrived, well-packed in a Priority Mail-stickered box, on the 26th, four days (including Sunday) after purchase. Considering it was the holiday weekend, and also considering that I bought it in the afternoon on the 22nd, that's a pretty impressive turnaround in my opinion.

Final Thoughts

This is a very specialized store, true, but it's well-indexed -- it's first-page on Google for "white noise machine", and it's first in the unpaid links for "ear plug store" and "ear plugs" due to its name, mainly. I can't imagine needing special ear plugs in my life, but there are some interesting finds to be made here.

If you're serious about your ears' health, or you just need a good night's sleep, the Ear Plug Super Store will probably be able to help you, and quickly.