Another Delayed Order...

[muddyfox470]

Originally Posted by email

***This is an automated email. Please do not reply***

Invoice Number: 000E
Account Name: xxxxxxxxx

Thank you for your order from Scan.

Please regard this email as a notification of delay in your order due to unexpected volumesin our warehouse. Please rest assured your custom is greatly valued and we will process your order with the utmost urgency. Your order has still been booked for a next working day delivery from the point of despatch and we will send further emails to confirm this.

Should you require any further information or assistance please log a query using our online Customer Support service. Alternatively, you can contact our delivery support team on 0870-755-4747.

We apologise for the delay and thank you for your patience.

This really is taking the biscuit, including this one, it makes the last 2 orders delayed. As well as numerous others, mainly due to stock discrepancies.

If you can't deal with the volumes why take orders. I understand that there are clauses on the orders regarding the dispatch dates and that they are only for estimates. But this really does make myself look like a fool, countless times orders have been delayed (probably > 50%) and most times I get stuff my friends want (to add to teh order etc). Even though I rave about the great CS, for consistently delayed packages it is ridiculous! My mates think I'm an idiot to keep returning to you, and they now tend to go elsewhere when they want their orders on a specific date due to the unreliability they have seen through me when I make orders.

I know I am not your biggest customer, nor is this the largest order ~ £65 but to say I have spent a fair few quid through you and this happens constantly. Sure enough aftersales and CS is good, but it's all a bit too late if the order is delayed, time after time Biggest pain as so many people comment on is that the emails go out around 7/8pm way too late for anything to be done, whether it is a small item that has caused an order to be delayed, or due to the lack of foresight that you can't get the order out. I thought this new warehouse of yours was supposed to erradicate such problems?

Sorry guys, but I will be thinking twice next time.

Regards

Ian

[BigFatCat]

I'm waiting on some new bits too, delay notice delivered on Monday, for an anticipated Tuesday delivery. No further updates and my account also shows nothing happening thus far.

Whilst I appreciate that demand is variable, and we benefit from keen pricing, I am starting to see Scan as someone you may not expect goods from in a hurry, or on a next day basis.

Let's hope the backlog clears soon and we can benefit from some happy shopping experiences.

[wither2000]

Same here - Ordered Thursday, delivery predicted for tuesday then delayed. Seems the warehouse is overloaded. Maybe scan should add a day or two to the predictions and then people would be happy when it was perhaps a day early. After all delivery inside a week of order isn't that bad, but its the broken 'promise' which upsets and makes people feel bitter, when customer service, prices and the rest are all as good as any.

[Gerrard]

Ordered Monday and got the same email (complete with typo!) yesterday. Can't complain at all. It's free and all my previous orders have been on time (even early once!). Might start to get a bit miffed it takes over a week, but I don't think that's likely. At least they've let me know there will be a delay, which is better than some places...

If you have too much stuff in your warehouse, I'm more than happy to look after some of it. You know, like the 8800 Ultras or Intel QX6850s! Just until you get back on your feet....

[BigFatCat]

Yes, quad core me up :-) Just to make more space for you.

[ChrisP]

Hi muddyfox470,


I do appreciate what you're saying and I can see that you originally requested delivery on 10/10/2007, which meant we would have had to ship it on the 9th for it to get there on time. However, it was delayed 1 day due to the volumes we had in the warehouse. We are experiencing a large backlog at the moment, due to a massive expansion and restructuring project of our warehouse coupled with an unusually and unexpectedly high volume of sales for this time of year. Despite the major disruptions of the building work and the additional pressure from the massive increase in volumes, I can assure you that our picking team is working as efficiently as possible to clear through the backlog of orders and we are doing our best to get people's order to them on their Requested Delivery Dates.

Whilst I do appreciate that it has been a real disappointment and that you waited in for the delivery, even though it was delayed by 1 day, I would also respectfully suggest that, to be fair on the picking team they did send you an email on the evening of the 9th, which informed you in advance that there would be a delay. The reason why we send these emails is to prevent the very situation that you were in, ie waiting for a delivery that isn't going to be there. We do say in all our correspondence, and on every delivery related page on the website it does ask customers to keep a close eye on their emails, and it also does stress that the delivery dates we give are estimates, not guarantees. I'm not saying any of this to be pedantic, just to explain to you in the hope that you can try to see from our point of view what has happened here and understand our system better for any future orders I hope you have with us, so that we never have this situation again. I could certainly understand your point if we actually advertised your delivery date as a guarantee, and we never emailed you to confirm that it was delayed, and indeed we emailed you to confirm it had been despatched. If that was the case then you would most certainly have a very very valid point. However, again I would implore you to consider that we honestly couldn't have any more systems in place from our end to keep people better informed.

Again your order has been delayed by 1 day and to say to stop taking orders because of a 1 day delay to a non guaranteed service is ridiculous..

Hexus customer's are treated like "Gods" and probably God himself would be put to the back of the que! before you guys ! - Not forgetting

WE OFFER THIS SERVICE FOR FREE !!

I don't want you to think that I'm trying to be pedantic or argumentative or anything like that, please trust me when I say none of us are like this. We care a great deal about our customers and we do process orders with the utmost urgency. The fact does remain that you haven't paid for a guaranteed service - it is an estimate. Of course we aim to meet the estimate and have the best of intentions of fulfilling it when we take your order. We set our cut-off points as realistically as we can, based on volumes and resources, which usually means that when we set out to calculate the ETA on your order we can be confident that we can meet it. However, sales can often be very unpredictable and it is sometimes difficult to calculate how quickly the picking dept can get through the volumes we have, especially when we are shipping 1000's a day. Due to the nature of the business we understand that it is very difficult for us to make guarantees for every order we accept. This is why we do not guarantee in the first place!

Indeed, the only service we have which we guarantee is a premium Saturday pre12pm delivery, which Citylink charge us extra for and we in turn charge our customers extra for. If any Saturday deliveries fail due to a delay or error by either Scan or Citylink, we always refund the extra paid for the premium, and sometimes more. This is because it is a guaranteed delivery service, and we understand that if we fail on a guarantee then we should compensate people for it. To be honest, regardless of this, there isn't actually any carriage that I can refund, as you get free carriage anyway!

Please be assured that our normal level of service and turnaround efficiency for orders will resume very shortly when we've caught up on the volumes downstairs and got all this building work done in the new warehouse. Ironically enough, the disruptions of this very building work is what has caused most of the delays in picking we've had over the last few weeks, but this building work is also the biggest thing we've done in many years which will actually push us forward and help us get 100% better in our dispatch and the efficiency of our picking dept. I guess sometimes it's a case of taking 1 step backwards then 2 steps forward in situations like this, but I assure you sincerely that we're getting there and we won't rest until we've got back to our normal Scan standard!

Shortly we will be posting through the sticky " Improvements / Expansions ", to explain in detail the new system we have already introduced to improve our service levels. as we realise the we have not really updated our customer's with the progress we have made so far.

I am very sorry about the disappointment you have experienced and I truly hope your faith has not been dented beyond repair we do not wish to lose you as a customer. Our growth and development over the past 20 years has been largely due to return business from long-standing customers. We hope we can still look forward to your business in the future and thank you once again for your patience and understanding despite the delay.

Your order is currently in picking and is due to be dispatched today for delivery tomorrow. Please continue to check your automated e-mail for status updates.

If you ever need anything at all in the future please don't hesitate to contact me.


All the best,

[BigFatCat]

Would it be feasible to make customers aware of a possible delay when placing a online order, a banner or something during checkout?

[Disturbedguy]

I think it will always be hard to predict delays as SCAN deal both online and over the Internet, who knows how many onliny and instore customers they get within say a five minute time slot.

[Gerrard]

Thanks for the info Chris. I have just got my stage 3 email, so should have my stuff by tomorrow anyway, but would have been much more patient with an explanantion that long and thorough! Just wish more companies had this level of communications with their customers.

[Platinum]

Free delivery guys, cut em some slack

[ChrisP]

Gerrard



More information regarding the expansions will come through soon

Thank you for your patience

Best Regards

[muddyfox470]

Thank you for the reply Chris. I didn't mean it in that way, offering the free delivery is a great bonus, and the improvements since before have been great, i.e. no longer having to wait a week for the 'normal' delivery to arrive from the date of ordering.

I'm not asking for any preferential treatment, I am happy to wait in line, the problem that gets me is how frequently these problems seem to crop up. You are a big company and have a large customer base and no wonder hiccups and problems occur, but to see the same problems happening time after time does not make great business sense. However to come on a web-forum and speak openly and admit your weaknesses is a brave thing and I am sure everyone appreciates this.

For me personally, I know many friends will not place an order through yourselves because of the problems they have seen through me when they have wanted something put in my order and time after time I have to say it is delayed, or it has gone out of stock. Personally I don't think my comment was ridiculous, however I will try to keep shopping with you, however in future it will depend on the circumstances and when I need the order in by and what I need.

It is comforting to me to see that people are in similar circumstances, but obviously in the wider scope it's bad for all. I hope the restructuring/new build goes to plan and would like to hear when everything is better than it used to be

Regards

Ian

PS. I don't think that BigFatCat's Idea is a bad one, when choosing the date I think some sort of infomation banner (not too intrusive) should pop up to inform the general user that it is only an estimation of delivery (as I said before I know it is in the Terms that people agree to) but it could save a lot more hassle when the avergae joe places an order, finds out it isn't guaranteed to save some strain on your CS team if and when this happens.
PPS. The reason I created this thread, was primarily for the new reason of the delay and the reoccurence and experience as I had noted. I am not knocking the CS, I just wanted to find out what was happening, realise my situation and see if any others were affected (which I believe it has done).