It all started in October.

I bought a small gift from a high street shop. I wrapped it, walked to the Post Office and sent it recorded delivery to an address one hour's drive from my home. In mid-December, I was back in the Post Office filling out a claim form for the value of the item.

Need I itemise the number of telephone calls that lay between? Shall I recount the frustration and anxiety my friend experienced when repeated requests for re-delivery fell on deaf ears?

Also in December, I had seen online an ornament manufactured in Germany. The company didn't deliver to the UK but Amazon did. I clicked and the item arrived within days but the colour was different when I saw in in the flesh (as it were). I clicked again to arrange its return. The following day a courier collected the ornament (free of charge). The money I'd spent was returned to my card.

As a customer, my first experience was time consuming, frustrating and unsatisfactory. By sharp contrast, Amazon offered good value, efficiency and five-star ease even when I changed my mind. With Christmas fast approaching, guess which method I chose for buying and sending presents?

The question is: should I feel guilty?

It's not that I am ignorant of the issues. I know Amazon's tax evasion is a moral disgrace. I know that it cut a deal with Luxembourg in 2003 whereby all online sales in Europe are technically between customers and a Luxembourg company. As a result, Amazon's main European subsidiary Amazon EU Sarl reports almost no profit despite annual sales of 14 billion euros or thereabouts. The European Commission is examining whether Luxembourg broke EU state aid rules. I truly hope justice prevails.

I admire those who argue that we should boycott Amazon in the meantime. I also can understand those who argue we shouldn't use it even if it does pay tax because it will crush smaller businesses. They believe that, if we don't resist it, our world will change to become a less diverse and interesting place.

I think the world always changes and we might as well try to stop the wind as resist it.

I look at my diary in the approach to Christmas. I set work commitments against the list of gifts and quantities of food still to be bought, and once more I turn on the computer.

Mary Portas would have me lynched.

The queen of the high street continues to wage war on behalf of small traders. Three years ago, she brought out a report recommending improved management of high streets with interest groups forming "town teams". She wanted affordable parking, better planning and disincentives for landlords who leave shops lying empty.

She is still calling for faster action on crippling business rates. In Scotland, business rates are devolved but here too retailers are unhappy. This is despite the Scottish Government's proud claim that 63 per cent of all retail premises pay reduced business rates or none.

David Martin, head of policy and external affairs at the Scottish Retail Consortium, says that, while the government scheme is admirable as far as it goes, radical reform is necessary.

He said: "The Small Business Bonus Scheme accounts for around £150 million. But of the £2.7bn annual take in business rates going to John Swinney's coffers, more than a quarter comes from the retail sector.

"Business rates revenues have increased 30 per cent from 2009-2014. This tax rises annually. It never dips. It doesn't respond to economic conditions."

It does seem a remarkably inflexible tool, given the volatility of our economy in the last decade, and the fast changing landscape retailers are facing. My own shopping habits are part of a major trend. Like other consumers I am looking for cost effectiveness and the ability to compare prices: convenience and choice.

Some stores that were selling 10 per cent of their goods online last year are selling almost half online this year. Increasingly we are ordering food online. Click and collect is growing in popularity at supermarkets, as is home delivery.

Figures show that the retail sector has faced more change in the past five years than in the previous 50. It is a shift in purchaser habits comparable to the advent of the department store.

In 1883 Emile Zola wrote his novel, The Ladies' Paradise, about the shrivelling of a small trader, dwarfed by the newly built, glittering emporium, where goods from across the world were piled high and sold cheap. It was an environment where people could meet and greet their friends. The department store was one of the very few public places where a respectable woman could be seen alone. It was a stepping stone on the route to women's liberation.

Now women, free as air, increasingly prefer to stay in the office or at home and shop online. As Christmas approaches, few have as much time to walk from shop to shop to select goods and compare prices. Why would they even attempt it when the selection online is international and price comparison is immediately accessible.

Virtual shopping is efficient, easy and seductive.

The message for the high street is adapt or die and retail traders know it. Ultimately they survived the 1880s and I hope they will survive today's technological revolution in shopping.

Despite my slide to the dark side, I see the importance of small shops as community hubs. They can offer specialist and hand crafted items. They are places where we can touch the goods, feel the quality of an item, smell a scent. They offer a personal service and they offer the increasing numbers of us who live alone the ability to buy small quantities. Most importantly, they employ Scots and keep their profits in Scotland.

Many are also selling online. They may start questioning why they should carry on paying rent, lighting and those business rates. Why not sell out of a shed? To do so would make wastelands of our town centres. We don't want that either but how do we avoid it?

Mr Martin insists retailers remain committed to their communities. But, as things stand, if a shopkeeper improves his or her premises, modernises in order to improve customer service and thereby stay in the competition, business rates rise.

Effectively, he or she is punished by a lower footfall on the one hand and punitive rates on the other.

The Government can do nothing to stem the tide of shoppers choosing to go online. It can, however, be more radical in its attempts to ease the financial burden on the small trader by making business rates more sensitive to market conditions.

The truth is that, despite Amazon's moral failure to pay its fair share of taxes, we continue to use the business. Despite a heartfelt sense of duty and loyalty to the virtuous small retailer pillars of our way of life, when it comes to convenience most of us shoppers will do what suits us. Ease and value are bigger motivators for consumers than loyalty.

So should I feel guilty? Not really. Like so many others, I'm just a leaf on that wind of change.