If you follow me on the fediverse, you may have scene my thread about trying innosearch. They've done a lot of marketing to the blindness community, including promotions with audiogames, and events with Freedom Scientific. In trying them, I wanted to know three things:

• Would innosearch help me move away from just buying everything from Amazon and towards smaller retailers instead?
• Would it actually increase the accessibility of my shopping experience?
• And, of course, would I actually get the product I ordered?

Here's how it went! I used innosearch to purchase a set of replacement filters for my VOCOlinc air purifier. This was a perfect test because they weren't available on Amazon Canada at the time, and the manufacturer website had accessibility issues making it difficult for me to purchase them directly. Also, if something went wrong, not having them wouldn't be the end of my world. I'd just be annoyed, not destroyed.

The shopping experience itself was excellent. I was able to search for the product and find the correct one right at the top. No sponsored listings, no "we instead recommend" rather than admitting they don't have it, no annoying coupon popups, etc. The AI did mix some reviews of the air purifier itself in with reviews of the filter, but this is something Amazon also tends to do. Innosearch has an "Ask AI" feature that can describe product images for you. While it worked well for me, I have a screen reader addon that does the same thing. Purchase was similarly smooth: sign in with Google, and check out with my stored information from stripe. If you use both Google and Stripe, you'll find that the checkout experience is just as quick as the one-click checkouts offered by other websites.

I got the email confirmation of my order within ten minutes. And then...I waited. And waited. I decided to contact support six days later with my order number, asking what was going on. I heard back with in a day from a real person, who said they were investigating. Another week went buy, and they contacted me again to let me know that they had found an alternative source for the product, but it was back-ordered and would require international shipping, and asking if I wanted to wait or cancel my order. I opted to wait; I was in no rush, and I wanted to know how this would ultimately get resolved.

Over the next couple of weeks, I got multiple, pro-active updates from several different people about the state and progress of my order, ending with a tracking number when they found someone who stocked the product and could ship to me. Finally, the product arrived yesterday. It took about a month from first order to getting my filters. I was a bit worried that because they ordered it from a different source, I would pay charges or import taxes or something. However, that didn't happen. Also, it was the correct item; something else I had wondered about with all the work they needed to do.

While that seems like a long time, support was fast, friendly, and knowledgeable. Try even contacting Amazon support at all! The price wasn't particularly marked up, so I have no idea how they make any money. In short, while the AI bits were fine, it was the human support agents that made my experience, and made sure I got what I ordered. Major credit to Dee for his/her professional friendliness and reassurance.

Unfortunately, though, I haven't found a second product to order on innosearch. While I've been searching there first all month, the results it returns are usually from Amazon. I have Amazon prime already, so it's cheaper for me to order direct and not pay shipping. However, if I ever need a product that's available somewhere other than Amazon, I will certainly consider innosearch. The quality of support I received means I'm also likely to consider them should I ever purchase a flight.

Going forward, I hope that they'll keep up the excellent support, add more different retailers,and maybe use the AI branding a bit less. It's the well designed website and human touch that make them worth using.