Don't make promises you can't keep!

[spark]

I am SO FRICKING PISSED right now.

On the 7th I ordered some shirts from welovefine.com Their site says that they ship within 5 business days.

So. Order on the 7th. Assume they don't actually get and process the order until the 8th. Be generous and call that day 0, so day 1 is the 9th. Being business days, the 10th and 11th don't count, so day 2 is the 12th. Day 5 then is the 15th, and I'll be generous AGAIN and say that means it should ship after that, on the 16th. And that's being VERY generous, really it should have shipped on the 14th.

So of course I started checking the mail for the damn thing a couple of days ago, since it should be here any day now.

Well NO, no it won't be! I just got a notification that it shipped TODAY. That 21st. FOURTEEN DAYS after I ordered it. NOT COOL.

Especially not cool since I ordered it for a convention that I'm leaving for tomorrow! I fired off an angry rant to their customer service, and I did get a prompt reply, and a coupon, but it was one of those "we always do our best to satisfy our customers, we're so sorry you're not happy" things, along with excuses about how they can't change the shipping method now, since it's already shipped.

Which frankly to me is implying that somehow I should have let them know it wasn't going to be in time before it shipped, but HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT?! I didn't know it was going to ship today until I got the already shipped notice, I am not a frigging psychic! I've never ordered from them before, I thought, when I didn't get a separate shipping notice in a reasonable time period that they were one of those sites that doesn't send one, some of the places I order from don't!

And of course the first place I posted this complaint all I got were people defending them. Twits. There is nothing defensible here! No matter how you slice it, 5 days and fourteen days are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form. They say that they print every order after getting it, so I understand that these things take time, and I would be 100% okay with how long this took, IF THEY HADN'T PROMISED ME 5 DAYS!!!!

[Andara Bledin]

Fun fact: In the face of mail order, the company must either ship by the date that they state they will ship by or contact the customer prior to the original ship date and offer to cancel their order with a full refund or get permission to ship at a later date. And, no, saying that "most orders ship within 5 business days" does not give a company a pass; if they can't ship by day 5, they are supposed to offer the customer the option of waiting or canceling.

The FTC Page about the "30-Day Rule"

The vast majority of Internet businesses are either completely ignorant or just don't care that they have legal obligations as regards to promised shipment dates.

^-.-^

[BeenThereDoneThat]

The FTC Page about the "30-Day Rule"

Wow. Very interesting stuff, and I bookmarked it for future reference. I guess either not enough people know about the rule to take some large companies to task for it, or those companies have found loopholes (or very slick lawyers).

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah. I learned a ton of fun and useful information about mail order businesses when I was a regular on the eBay community forums way back when. I'm sure it's saved me a ton of grief over the years and I know I've caused businesses to change some of their policies (mostly by forcing them to stop trying to charge a surcharge on credit card purchases, which is illegal in this state).

^-.-^