Rant: Why the heck does it take three days to ship a tiny order? Ravings of a madman

[MichaelD]

RANT ON! :| Yeah, I guess I am a little mad. I ordered my new case and two extra case fans from Emscomputing.com. They had the lowest prices on Thursday morning. Their online ordering process allows you to check stock on the particular item(s) before ordering to ensure that the order gets pulled/packed sent quickly.

On their site, the say that oders are shipped "24 to 48 hours after the order is placed." Bulldoody. I placed my order at 0900 hours THEIR time (early enough, right?" on Thursday. Yesteraay afternoon, I called their customer service to see if there was anthing wrong w/my order as it hadn't shipped yet (according to their tracking app) and I hadn't gotten my "your order has shipped email."

It took the guy (kid...he sounded like the typical "16 y.o. working part time" customer service person) about 3 minutes to even find my order. My order # came up on his terminal, but then for some reason, they have to go find the matching piece of paper before they can tell you anything. He finally found it and relayed the following piece of high-tech, mass info to me "uh, here it is; it's in the wharehouse."

I said, "well, that's dandy...is it going to ship sometime this week?" He said should be today or tomorrow. I said "that's dandy, thanks" and hung up.

This is the first slightly negative experience I've had w/online purchasing in about three years, so I guess I'm pretty lucky. I always have probs w/UPS or FEDEX, but that' not the reseller's problem.

I find it so ironic that your CC is charged not even 5 minutes after you click the "Finalize & purchase order" button, but it takes three days to send the freakin' thing. Assuming these slugs actually get the thing out to UPS today, I'll be lucky to see it by Friday. That sucks. Thank you for listening. I feel slightly better now. RANT OFF!

 

[bjc112]

that sucks, when i ordered my video card from MWave awhile back, it took 3 days to ship,

when i ordered my ram from Onvia the same day.. took them 10 days!!



<< It took the guy (kid...he sounded like the typical &quot;16 y.o. working part time&quot; customer service person) >>



HEY! i am 16 !

 

[MichaelD]

Oops. It figures; the first person to read my post gets ticked by something I wrote. I know that it's not fair to generalize by age group...didn't mean to offend. I just seem to have bad luck w/younger folks when dealing with them. Particularly over the phone. I ask too many questions, it seems, and they &quot;huff and puff&quot; like I'm really putting them out by asking questions that they are getting paid to answer Thems the breaks though. Have a nice day.

 

[BlueHeelers]

I imagine they place a lot of &quot;small&quot; orders ($200 or less) and its not practical for them to have a huge staff of &quot;handlers&quot; without having higher prices. I don't know much about markup and all on the equipment, but I doubt there is much room for hiring more employees to get things out in time.

Or perhaps they are JIT and when you order the item, they order it from somewhere else and ship that way?

REL

 

[bjc112]

lol, mike i am not offended at all.. .. just wanted to yell!!

 

[yellowperil]

Too bad EMS Computing won't allow pick ups on orders. I was planning to buy a 19&quot; monitor but I don't want to pay $30 to have it shipped to the same city.

 

[nortexoid]

it took about two weeks to get my case from directron via borderfree...

be happy.

 

[SerraYX]

<< I just seem to have bad luck w/younger folks when dealing with them. Particularly over the phone. I ask too many questions, it seems... >>



I have to put some input here, being 16 and all I have bad experiences with older folks, took 5 different reps at Comcast to each go through 6 databases (all on different terminals, how bright is that?) to get my @Home account activated.

Anyway, to answer your question, a lot of companies are plain slow. The warehousing or transport they use is either very inefficient, or they only ship when a certain number of orders are ready. I worked at a particularly bad warehouse, part-time, and it took forever to find or even receive an order, some were dated 24 or 36 hours, when they promised 48 hour shipping. Did not help stress levels there much..always made me wonder why they used such a crappy company. Even then, the transport from storage to place of shipping can be damn slow, some places are nitpicky and check over orders, or even hold them until everything is double and triple checked. That *can* be a good thing, I'm taking note of the guy who received someone else's RAM of the same name but a different state. They may ship the same day, but they didn't check the order well.

EDIT: Stupid forum code..

 

[Medea]

<Particularly over the phone>

Well, this doesn't have to do with deliveries and I don't know the age, but....

Phone support: Yes, and what is the name?
Me: Joe
Phone support: How do you spell that?

I swear, I'm not making this up!

 

[bjc112]

lol,

it gets bad, when you tell them something.. and then you ask them if there is any thing they recommend to do to fix it... (this is about my burner)

i said yea, my burner isn't workin blah blah..

i said i checked IDE cables, updated drivers firmware.. all that..

first thing he says.. is it hooked up?

:|

most of the time tech support is not helpful

 

[novice]

If you think 3 days to ship a tiny order is bad, try (or rather don't even consider) baysoftgames.com. I ordered a dreamcast joystick for my son on 5-24. Got an order confirmation, which apparently only means that they charged my credit card on 5-25. For some reason, UPS was unable to provide tracking info. Oh, I guess they are unable to track what hasn't shipped. Why didn't it ship? Because, as I found out after E-Mailing them on 5-30, the product was not only not in stock, but backordered!! :| Of course I cancelled the order as soon as I found out, and it took them &quot;only&quot; 8 days to credit back my card (after already holding my funds for 6 days prior to my cancelling the order). I do not know for sure if my complaint to the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau or the disputed charge I filed with my credit card company had anything to do with the &quot;expedited&quot; refund, or not. But if you ask me those clowns never should have charged my card in the first place!
Chuck

 

[MichaelD]

Oh yeah, sure, I feel MUCH better now! (JK) Yeah, horror stories abound here. :Q I appreciate the &quot;Sharing O' the Horror&quot;; unfortunately, we are at the mercy of these clowns.

Well, I just check the &quot;order status app&quot; on EMS' site. My order didn't ship today. Just you wait until Resellerratings.com contacts me with the &quot;after the order&quot; survey. I've already planning on giving them a &quot;less than satisfactory&quot; rating as far as ship time goes. We have to wait and see if:

1. I get my COMPLETE order. One case and two case fans...how hard could it be? (Famous last words!)
2. I get all my stuff and it's in one piece, no parts missing and everything works as it should

I've gone thru the whole RMA process before. It is not pretty at all, and most of the time you wind up losing money. I.E. you have to pay to ship it back and they dont' reimburse you for it. We'll see. I know they aren't open on Sunday. They had better ship it Monday. Oh yeah, BTW, according to their FAQ, there is a 15% cancellation charge on an order that HASN'T SHIPPED YET! WTF is up w/that? I bought from them B/C they had the lowest price on the net. We'll see if I ever use them again. Have a nice evening.

 

[Courtland]

I really wish ups, fedex, and the retailers would come up with a cheaper and faster way to ship stuff. As internet shopping becomes more and more popular, I think it would help a lot, I mean if you could overnight something for under 5 bucks, assuming it was light, like a cd or something, id order more cds online rather than going to the store and paying a bit more.

 

[Bleep]

I would like to remind everyone here that it is against the law to charge your card until the article is actually shipped. Call your credit card company and have them rant at the dealer a little, it will help and if everyone complained about this happening and some charges brought this practice would stop.
Bleep

 

[TunaBoo]

I happen to be an 18 year old computer store junkie.

Lots of time due to supply problems or something that comes up, we CANT ship it out within 48 hours. Its hard, but nothing us &quot;punk ars kids&quot; can do about it. Either talk to an owner about it, or suck it up. There is no reason to be rude to the workers at the computer store.

 

[MichaelD]

I've decided to &quot;make this personal&quot; and monitor EMS to death. Their customer service folks are gonna get an earfull from me on this. Why does it take a darn week to ship three things that are in stock? Yes, I've read all the replies above. Some were very good and educational, but I'm still pissed off.

I'm going to inform you guys of the status every day until I get my stuff. Ha! You know how after you place an online order, the ResellerRatings.com survey pops up? Well, they ask you &quot;when RU expecting delivery of your goods?&quot; They ask so they know when to send you the follow-up survey via email so you can rate &quot;the total shopping experience at Store XYZ&quot; At this friggin' rate, I'll get the follow-up survey before they even ship the stuff! That's really sad. The last two places I ordered from were Crucial and PCBoost. Crucial has free Second Day. Indeed I got it on the second day. I choose UPS Ground w/PCBoost cause I wasn't in a hurry. With PCBoost, I ordered my stuff on Monday. They shipped it on Tuesday. I was playing with the stuff on Friday. As it should be. Unless they have some ridiculously fantastic deal on something I want, I'll never shop at EMS again. This is BS. The stuff was in stock! I called on Friday to bust chops! Hello...can you hear another customer walking out the door w/o buying anything? OK. Talk to you guys tomorrow.

 

[Smbu]

Hmmm... a month ago I ordered a pcmcia firewire card for my laptop and it shipped 2-3 days later, but I still have not received the item. It shipped Airborne Express using their Express next day by 10am service and it has been exactly one month since the card was shipped. I recently contacted Airborne Express and they said I should be receiving the package in a few days. Since I don't have any firewire stuff right now it doesn't bother me too much, but it still shouldn't take this long.

OTOH I did have a very good experience the other day, too. I called Compaq customer support to get a replacement trackpoint stick cap for my laptop pointer stick on Thursday and I received the package the with a couple of replacements on Friday. That UPS next day shipping sure is nice and since my laptop is still under warranty I didn't even have to pay for it.

 

[MichaelD]

SMBU,

Hey, cool man. Don't get me wrong; I've had plenty of positive experience w/internet shopping. Not just computer parts either. Clothes, car parts, bike parts, flowers, you name it. It's just that these guys have pissed me off. On their site, they tout; &quot;your order will be processed the same day that we receive it, and we'll get it out to you quickly&quot; My foot. Oh yeah, they &quot;processed it&quot; alright. They charged my CC and not much else. That's OK though. It's my new case...not like I&quot;m desperate for it. But what if I was? What if my 5-year old son decided to bash my current case with his PowerRangers lightsword thingee? (Or whatever the heck that annoying toy is called!) I'm soooo glad I didn't pay for 24 or 48 hour shipping...they would've not met the timeline, I would've asked for reimbursement, they'd have said, &quot;go #$%^ yourself&quot; and I would've called the BBB...big whole 45-page typewritten complaint...I've done it before...wouldn't be the first time. But who want to go thru all that mess? I just want my stuff! (Whine, whine, wine.) Would you like some cheese with your wine, Sir?

 

[TunaBoo]

<< SMBU,

Hey, cool man. Don't get me wrong; I've had plenty of positive experience w/internet shopping. Not just computer parts either. Clothes, car parts, bike parts, flowers, you name it. It's just that these guys have pissed me off. On their site, they tout; &quot;your order will be processed the same day that we receive it, and we'll get it out to you quickly&quot; My foot. Oh yeah, they &quot;processed it&quot; alright. They charged my CC and not much else. That's OK though. It's my new case...not like I&quot;m desperate for it. But what if I was? What if my 5-year old son decided to bash my current case with his PowerRangers lightsword thingee? (Or whatever the heck that annoying toy is called!) I'm soooo glad I didn't pay for 24 or 48 hour shipping...they would've not met the timeline, I would've asked for reimbursement, they'd have said, &quot;go #$%^ yourself&quot; and I would've called the BBB...big whole 45-page typewritten complaint...I've done it before...wouldn't be the first time. But who want to go thru all that mess? I just want my stuff! (Whine, whine, wine.) Would you like some cheese with your wine, Sir? >>



My god you whine so much! Go buy a compaq and get on your AOL, and all will be good.

 

[compuwiz1]

<< I would like to remind everyone here that it is against the law to charge your card until the article is actually shipped >>



That is not always true. Custom orders, such as pretested CPU's, custom made cabinets, etc, are not illegal to charge in advance for. I have a merchant account, and I understand the rules well. Anything that can be considered custom, or a made to order item CAN be charged in advance of shipping.

 

[Smbu]

&quot;<< SMBU,

Hey, cool man. Don't get me wrong; I've had plenty of positive experience w/internet shopping. Not just computer parts either. Clothes, car parts, bike parts, flowers, you name it. It's just that these guys have pissed me off. On their site, they tout; &quot;your order will be processed the same day that we receive it, and we'll get it out to you quickly&quot; My foot. Oh yeah, they &quot;processed it&quot; alright. They charged my CC and not much else. That's OK though. It's my new case...not like I&quot;m desperate for it. But what if I was? What if my 5-year old son decided to bash my current case with his PowerRangers lightsword thingee? (Or whatever the heck that annoying toy is called!) I'm soooo glad I didn't pay for 24 or 48 hour shipping...they would've not met the timeline, I would've asked for reimbursement, they'd have said, &quot;go #$%^ yourself&quot; and I would've called the BBB...big whole 45-page typewritten complaint...I've done it before...wouldn't be the first time. But who want to go thru all that mess? I just want my stuff! (Whine, whine, wine.) Would you like some cheese with your wine, Sir? >>



My god you whine so much! Go buy a compaq and get on your AOL, and all will be good.&quot;

Hey, I'm using a Compaq(although it is a laptop), but I don't have AOL. Armada's rule!!!

 

[MichaelD]

Good morning. First update of the day. It is now 0830 EST. So, it's 0830 in Gainsville, FL. EMS is either open already, or will be opening in 30 minutes. I'll give them until lunchtime to see if they do ANY WORK AT ALL THIS MORNING. Then I'll call them and start busting chops.

 

[MichaelD]

Update: me being the patient person that I am, I called EMS customer service. This time, I got someone who actually wanted to help me. How strange. Anyway, my order has shipped already. But not together. Two days apart, two boxes. I was given tracking numbers. I'll get my case fans today and the case on Wednesday.

The order tracking application on their website shows &quot;no tracking numbers available&quot;; neither did I get a &quot;your order has shipped&quot; email from them, like they told me I would. The guy on the phone this morning was very nice, so I didn't lay into him. That would've been rude. But I did ask him why I didn't get an email AND why the website shows that the order hasn't been shipped. He had no answers for me. I'm still going to bomb them on reseller ratings and fire off a flame-mail to them. Bah. Hopefully the case is in one piece and new when I get it. Just keeping you updated.

 

[TunaBoo]

Oh BTW I work at a computer store as you read above.

I hate pople that are arses. Seriously, every time someone like you calls, I take their order and set it on the &quot;to ship tomorrow&quot; instead of the &quot;to ship today&quot; pile. I love getting revenge on whiney little brats.

 

[MichaelD]

TunaBoo,

If you would take the time to actually read my entire post, you'd see that I haven't been an ass to anyone. I have worked in customer service most of my life and know what it's like to get dumped on for no reason. I also know what it's like to blow someone off, when the capability to service them/help them/answer their question is more than available. In other words, (but in small words for someone who doesnt' read the entire post) I'm not an ass if I'm not assed-on in the first place.

All I've said is their shipping s*cks. Now that I've found out that their order tracking process s*cks just as badly, I actually have something to gripe about, which I will do in the proper, adult way. You'd be surprised what a polite, carefully worded letter will get you.

Have you read this far? Have a nice day.