In as little as 45 minutes

[Mytical]

First..got to get this off my chest...<censored>.... ok..feel better now.

Yes, the website swears up and down that if you order online you can pick up the item at a local store in as little as 45 minutes. Right next to "orders can take 24 hours to process". Do sc's see the second part? Yeah..and monkies fly out of pigs behinds.

Orders can be randomly selected for 'extra verification', and got a call from a customer who got lucky enough to have no one, but TWO orders selected. Yay me. To make a long story short, of course we were 'ruining their business' as these were needed IMMEDIATELY. Sorry, have no control over which orders get selected, can't do anything at all about it either. Nothing, nada, zero, zilch. Thanks for playing, you don't get any lovely parting gifts.

So for about 30 minutes..had to listen to the ranting and raving on how this was going to 'cost us thousands of dollars' cause their lack of planning is MY emergency. Pointing out where the website says about the 24 hours did nothing, explaining it did nothing. By the end of the call..I was ready to jump out a 3rd story window..good thing I was on the ground floor.

[RealUnimportant]

I play WoW, & they've recently started a special offer whereby you can invite ex-players back & both of you get rewards... The impatience this is causing because people expect it to happen instantly, yet everywhere you look on the site says it takes at least a day & possibly 2 to process - AAAAAAGH!

Not quite the same level as your suckitude though, but goes to show that even if you only showed the 24 hours bit, they'd still expect it nao NAO!

[emax4]

Because of the wording, maybe see if you can get a hold of the advertising department and mention an error in the wording. See if they can rephrase the wording to say:

"Orders can take up to 24 hours to process. Once completed, they can be picked up in as little as 45 minutes!"

or

"Orders may take up to 24 hours for processing, but can be picked up once the processing is complete. You will be notified by phone or email upon processing completion."

Basically, put the 45 minute wording at the end so that they HAVE to see the 24 hr notification first. Better yet, replace "45 minutes" with "in under 2 hours" (stretch it out to not only give yourselves time, but the impatient customers won't get so hyped up over 120 minutes instead of 45 minutes). Don't even put down "45 minutes", and just say "Customers will be notified".

[thehuckster]

Because of the wording, maybe see if you can get a hold of the advertising department and mention an error in the wording. See if they can rephrase the wording to say:

"Orders can take up to 24 hours to process. Once completed, they can be picked up in as little as 45 minutes!"

or

"Orders may take up to 24 hours for processing, but can be picked up once the processing is complete. You will be notified by phone or email upon processing completion."

Basically, put the 45 minute wording at the end so that they HAVE to see the 24 hr notification first. Better yet, replace "45 minutes" with "in under 2 hours" (stretch it out to not only give yourselves time, but the impatient customers won't get so hyped up over 120 minutes instead of 45 minutes). Don't even put down "45 minutes", and just say "Customers will be notified".

I totally agree. I know of many places which "highball" the ETA just so that when they deliver it to you in less time you can think, "Hey, that was early!" When I take my car in for an oil change, they always estimate two hours, and more often than not, they call me within one hour to pick it up.

[barainga]

we do the same thing with pizza delivery. say 35-40 mins but often have it there much sooner.
of course if we told them 20 and it took 25...

[2gigch1]

Forward all complaints to the advertising department. See how long it takes to get the advertisement fixed.

[csquared]

"Orders can take up to 24 hours to process. Once completed, they can be picked up in as little as 45 minutes!"

You know how customers see what they want to see. All they would see is:

"Orders can take up to 24 hours to process. Once completed, they can be picked up in as little as 45 minutes!"

Then we add in Customer Standard time:

2:00 PM - Places order
2:15 PM - Standing in store screaming "What do you mean it's not ready! I PLACE THE ORDER THREE HOURS AGO!!!Eleventy11!!11!!!!!!"

The store The Wife works for has a process for back ordered items. After it has arrived at the warehouse and is loaded on a truck, the store is notified that it is one the way. The customer is then sent an email stating that they are to call the store and schedule the pickup. She has lost count of the number of people that have shown up the same day, waving a printout of the email, screaming "Where is my stuff!"

[Mytical]

Heh, and the thing is .. it may only take the 45 minutes. Sometimes even less. That depends on a lot of things, however. 1) The store picked having the item IN STOCK. 2) Not being randomly chosen for extra verification. 3) No system hiccups/glitches/etc.

Yeah, if they listened to me they would take the mention of 45 minutes out completely. Since everything has to be perfect for that 45 minutes to happen..and you know how often things go perfect.

[Primer]

My pharmacy did not have a couple of my meds in stock and had to order them in on the next day's truck. They called me and said, "We have your prescriptions!" I said, "Thank you, I'll be there shortly." They said, "See ya in a bit."

I get there only to find out that "We have your prescriptions" means that they were on the truck that came in, NOT that they were ready to pick up. I just wandered the store until they were ready. Getting upset would not have accomplished anything. I kinda think they appreciate that I don't get all huffy. They sure do bend over backwards for me sometimes when they don't have to!

[Food Lady]

Now that I think about it, I have never timed a pizza delivery. I have no idea if they came in 20 minutes or 40. I'm simply not looking for reasons to complain. And if it was quoted at 20 minutes, and I was aware it took 25, meh. Who cares? It's 5 minutes. Not worth stressing over.

[Marszenka]

But Food Lady, you're not an SC! :P

Yeah, the advertisement here was really unwisely put together. >_> If 45 minutes is something that only happens once in a blue moon, it's a bad idea to show it off as a company strength. Even non-sucky people could get bothered by that kind of phrasing (I know it bugs me).

[Brojekk]

Now that I think about it, I have never timed a pizza delivery. I have no idea if they came in 20 minutes or 40. I'm simply not looking for reasons to complain. And if it was quoted at 20 minutes, and I was aware it took 25, meh. Who cares? It's 5 minutes. Not worth stressing over.

This....exactly.

[EricKei]

By the end of the call..I was ready to jump out a 3rd story window..good thing I was on the ground floor.

I prefer to envision them jumping out of a 3rd storey window of their own accord...

I play WoW, & they've recently started a special offer whereby you can invite ex-players back & both of you get rewards...

I've heard that some of those rewards are fairly ridiculous...like a free trip to Level 80 for one toon o_O D&D Online is doing something not entirely dissimilar with their top-end pre-order pack for their next expansion (due in June) -- they have 3 levels: $30 (expansion only); $60 or $70, not sure which (expansion plus a pet, a permanent EXP booster, some nice goodies and unlocks); or $90 for all of the above plus 3 pets, around $200 (retail) worth of unlocks and store "points/currency", and each and every toon you have, plus each one you make from then on, gets an item that permanently grants something like +25% to all EXP. One toon on each server also gets an additional (read: stacking) permanent +50% EXP boost.

we do the same thing with pizza delivery. say 35-40 mins but often have it there much sooner.
of course if we told them 20 and it took 25...

Precisely. One of the GRATE SEKRITS OF KUSDUMBER SERVISS is to Underpromise and Overdeliver. If you know there's no way it'll take more than half an hour (barring unforeseen circumstances), quote them a 35-40 minute delivery time; a 36-minute actual delivery time due to, say, a traffic snarl, will be fine in that case. Most of the time, you'll be "pleasantly early" ^_^ And I can back up the inverse from personal experience: If you quote 30 minutes and it takes 36, you're unreasonably late, and possibly even "lazy"

[Shalom]

O hell yes. When I worked for the chains, I never quoted less than 15 minutes on a prescription, even if it could be done in 5. In the Chain of Verylarge Stores, putting a prescription in as a waiter gave you the choice of 5, 10 or 15 minutes. Guess which one I picked 100% of the time.

(If your prescription wasn't rung out in the quoted time, it "went red" on the screen. Too many of these, and the head pharmacist's bonus was affected negatively. This meant that often, if we had scripts going red, the techs would edit them, make some meaningless change (or even none at all), and re-save them with a new time. This of course resulted in the script being reversed and rebilled, which cost the company money for transmission fees. If it came to a choice between making either the pharmacist or the head office lose money, guess which one we picked. Hint: it wasn't the one we stood next to every day.)

[CorneliaMarieRocks]

Shalom, yep we had the same type of system in the photo lab dept. If our photo machine went down or for some reason we had orders pending in the system that couldn't be completed, we would delete it out of the system & then re-enter it whenever whatever broke was fixed to avoid having it "go red"