I ordered the materials on a Monday, early enough to expect that they would ship out that day (they claimed, IIRC, that they usually had same day shipping on items). On the day I expected the items to show up I called to get a tracking number to confirm that they'd be there that day only then to find out that they hadn't shipped the order. They didn't wind up receiving the materials that they had to order until the following Tuesday and I didn't receive the order until the following Friday, over a week after I expected to have received the items. This isn't the old West where you write a letter back East to order something and it shows up 3 months later and 30 days is highly unacceptable for a delay on an order. So is a company providing ordering services online but yet being unable to inform you at the time you place the order that one or more items are not in stock. The failures on their part were 1) timeliness in delivering the product. UPS at its most basic rate shipping can still get a package from one state to most any place in that state in one day, and, for the smaller states, to several surrounding states. Even getting a package at that slow, cheap rate, from Maine to California isn't more than about 6 days. Expecting to receive items in a timely fashion is not an unreasonable request. Particularly in this day and age of efficiency and computer controls. I had made commitments to have materials on hand at a particular time and wasn't able to stand by them. 2) There is no excuse for a company that sells items online not to have a way for the inventory of the items to be known by the ordering system; i.e. the order interface should have been able to access the inventory and inform me at the time of the order that an item was not in stock. I have years of experience in designing and implementing similar systems (e.g.
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which I did the server/online implementation of as it transisioned from CompUSA to Telvista) and I assure you that when you made a change in the system at one point it was immediately available from other points. What I'm saying is that I've done work like this, I know how it
*can* work, and the stuff I worked on didn't have such a huge logic-gap; how can you design a system to take orders and
*not* give it access to the inventory information which should have been computerized, too?
Finally, the biggest problem was the complete lack of interest on their part to acknowledge that they'd not properly handled the order and a complete disinterest in retaining me as a client. All I wanted when I first called them and found that the order had not shipped was, "We're sorry, we should have contacted you. We'll ship what we have now and ship the other item as soon as it arrives, no extra cost for the shipping." That's how I run my business now and it's how I expect to be treated. When I order from
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I get a confirmation order immediately and then, within a business day, an e-mail letting me know the status of my order. Unfortunately their system doesn't indicate inventory status but at least I know what the status of my order is within 24 hours or so which proves that an Internet business
*can* notify individual customers of the status of their order.
--HC