Premiumcollectables (PC) (Australia) feedback

[griffin]

That would be funny... in a bad way of course.
You get to the Coles Checkout and the cashier keeps pulling items off the conveyor and putting them behind her, saying, "sorry, this is out of stock".
You - "But... it's right there! I had it in my trolley. I want to buy it."
Her - "Sorry, the person behind you bought it."
You - "What the? How could they buy it if I had it in my trolley?"
Her - "Don't know, but that's just what happens here. Have a nice day."

[spiderken17]

You should not be able to add an item to your cart if it is out of stock.

[Raider]

I'm not so concerned about the adding to cart. The process seems to be:

Navigate to page > add item to cart if you can > once item is added option to checkout > click checkout > confirm postage details > navigate to payment stage (at this point it should be confirmed if you have the item or not) > payment processes and confirmation of purchase.

My gripe, which I seem to be saying a lot, is that I was at the last stage where payment was being processed and that is when I'm told its out of stock. However, people managed to purchase it after my purchase was rejected for lack of stock. That is my biggest issue. I can understand it not being held if its just in your cart, but being at the payment processing stage should lock it out but there is still no reason why people could purchase it after me if it wasn't a site processing issue.

On a side note, I know PC has coped a bad rap for customer service by some but they responded to a private facebook message on the issue within 12 hours with a genuine attempt to answer my query. It opened more questions than answers but was pretty decent turnaround on a response.

[djanscak]

Concert ticket websites don't have a problem putting holds on items that actually work. I understand it's not exactly the same (each ticket is a unique item but each MP28 is a unit of a unique item) but it's still solvable if the desire was there to do so.

[davieanix]

How quickly are in stock items processed and shipped?

[Raider]

So I just received notification that my CW Deluxe Wave 4 pre-orders are in stock and have been shipped by Courier. Within 6 minutes of me sending an email to PC asking them to notify the courier to just leave the items at my doorstep I had received a reply email confirming they had notified the Courier. Very attentive if you ask me.

[SuspectimusPrime]

A little late to the discussion, but I think the concert-ticket system would be a good model to duplicate - the key differentiating factor between it and the aforementioned examples would be a time delay on how long an item stays in your cart, like a reserve for 20 mins whilst you shop for other stuff. Quite a few other ecommerce websites have this feature already for clothing and sporting equipment (theactive.com.au is the first to mind, as I really like their user experience).

[jazzcomp]

I emailed PC about possible pick up since I'm not home on delivery day and tracking showed I signed for it I didn't know I have this superpower to be at 2 places at once.

Previously, tracking wasn't updated even if I already received the item.

[Raider]

So I just received notification that my CW Deluxe Wave 4 pre-orders are in stock and have been shipped by Courier. Within 6 minutes of me sending an email to PC asking them to notify the courier to just leave the items at my doorstep I had received a reply email confirming they had notified the Courier. Very attentive if you ask me.

And it turns out the Courier must have ignored/overlooked PC's request as they attempted delivery and then dropped it at their "local depot" which just happens to be a news agency that is a 2 minute walk from my work! So that was lucky but I put a lot of this down to issues with the Courier and not PC. I remain firmly on the pro-PC bandwagon

[drifand]

Is one of those things we need to weigh up I guess.