When ecommerce goes bad

Posted by Rob on 08 Nov 2008 in Ecommerce | Permalink

Imagine the scenario. You’re shopping for some things you need and find a site that has what you want, at the right price - fantastic!

I needed some new jeans and found a web site that had what I wanted. I checked their address and telephoned them to ask a couple of questions - all fine and dandy. I also checked the domain name records, the existence of secure ordering pages on the site, and did a web search for any negative reviews/comments. I found nothing of concern, it all looked good and a safe bet, so I placed an order.

For £3.99 I opted to get my new jeans next day and paid with Paypal. The Paypal email receipt came through within minutes but the promised email order confirmation never arrived.

Not a good start and three days later and I still have no new jeans!

What the site claims to offer

Their strap line is ”Shipping the best UK jeans brands next-day since 2003”. That’s not a difficult thing to do as our available postal systems are more than adequate to offer this service. Having placed the order just after lunchtime I thought that this was plenty of time for them to get it in the post 1st class. No such luck!

At this point in time, before you ask, I have emailed their sales department about my order.

Checking their terms

They proudly tell you that ”We deliver your order according to the service you have selected”, so by ordering next day delivery I would expect them to arrive at that time, but even allowing for a failure with the postal service two days should be sufficient for 1st class post.

But what if the items were not in stock?

There was nothing on the site to tell me that the items I ordered weren’t in stock, so it was reasonable to assume that they were in stock. Even their terms say ”If your item is not in stock, we will back order for you. You will always be emailed with the option to cancel your order if you would rather not wait” - note that they say that they’ll contact me if they haven’t got my goods to hand - I’ve had no correspondence from them to say this is the case.

Will my goods ever turn up?

I hope so! It’s not about losing the money - I paid with Paypal so making a charge back isn’t a problem - but my experience so far has been very poor. A company that offers but never delivers won’t get any repeat business from me, and it makes me wonder how many others have had a similar experience.

There could in fact be a problem somewhere. Maybe it’s a stock problem and they haven’t told me, maybe the parcel has got lost in the post, maybe they are just incompetent. I’m going to run with this one to see what happens just out of curiosity!

The moral of the story

For anyone running an online shop there are a few things you can do to improve your customers experience…

If there’s a problem with the order tell the customer immediately, or certainly within 24 hours of the order being placed
If you deal in products that often go out of stock tell customers the availability on your site - most decent shopping cart systems will do this for you
Check that your shopping cart works properly (ie sending out customer emails)
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver!

Update 12th November 2008
My new jeans arrived today, 7 days after I ordered them with next day delivery, and despite my email to their sales department last week I’ve still had no reply. I won’t be shopping with them again.