Order: 595723
Placed on November 24th.
Everything was in stock. In fact I decided against one item and got a different one instead because my first choice wasn't in stock. I wanted the order to make it on time for christmas.
I waited and waited. Like Peter Billingsly waiting for his Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring. However each day I was "skunked" when I got home.
Finally I thought "Hey what gives?"
I ordered them for christmas presents. I live in canada so I do expect things to take a couple weeks sometimes which is why I ordered them back in November. However, they hadn't arrived yet and I was starting to get worried.
I checked online a few days ago and discovered that all my items were still listed as "Awaiting Shipment".
I couldn't decide if that meant that I was waiting to receive them or if it meant that Paizo still hadn't shipped them.
However, to be on the safe side I e-mailed Paizo a couple of days ago. When I didn't hear back, I phoned them today. Apparently they were out feeding the Kobold and couldn't answer the phone so I left a message.
Then magically, this e-mail appeared:
<i>
Dear xxxx,
Those should be shipping out to you today. Thanks!
Sincerely,
James Sutter
Customer Service Rep.
Paizo Publishing, LLC
425.289.0060
customer.service@paizo.com
</i>
That was earlier today. When I check my account it still says "Awaiting Shipment".
What this tells me is that Paizo is either way too understaffed or extremely unorganized. My order has been sitting there ready to go for 20 days.
I sure hope it arrives in time for christmas.
Dear Lisa,
First off, my apologies for the delay - I know how frustrating waiting can be, particularly with a deadline like Christmas ticking ever closer.
That said, I feel I should clarify something - at no point would we ever leave your order sitting around the warehouse for 20 days! The problem is that items listed as "available" on the website aren't necessarily in our warehouse - given the number of products we offer, we'd have to rent a stadium! What it means instead is that we can *get* the item from either the manufacturer or a distributor, which is why some products (like back issues of our magazines) ship in a day or two and others (particularly those from smaller game companies) can take much longer and end up holding up an order. In this case, we were waiting on one of the Gallant Hand gamer bags, which just came in today - now that we have it, we're going to do our best to get the whole order packaged up and shipped off to you immediately.
Sorry again about both the delay and the confusion, and please just email customer.service@paizo.com if you have any further questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
James Sutter
Customer Service
Dear Lisa,
The problem is that items listed as "available" on the website aren't necessarily in our warehouse...
Yes I'd say that's a problem. As I stated in my first post, I purposely avoided an item that was listed as "Out of Stock" so that there would not be a delay. The item was a green and brown velvet gamers bag. I switched to a green and silver gamers bag that was listed as "In Stock". (As it turns out, according to your explanation, I probably could have had the Brown and Green bag in the same time frame anyway so I might as well have ordered it.)
In the confirmation e-mail that I received on November 24, there was never any mention of an item not being available.
When I've ordered from other large online retailers like chapters, amazon, or MEC, they list whether or not an item is "in stock" on their website. If, when they go to prepare the order, an item isn't availabe because their "in stock" doesn't actually match their "warehouse" numbers, they notify the customer that there will be a delay. I have actually had this happen a couple of times before and I do understand the difficulty with managing large diverse inventory.
However, I would have expected an e-mail from paizo within a couple of days if an item I'd ordered was truly not available. That way I would have been able to make an informed decision about continuing with the order.
It would definitely be better business practice for Paizo to inform customers more accurately about their order. It would also be nice if Paizo had an option to have items that are available delivered immediately or an option to cancel the order if the items aren't actually readily available.
As of 5 days ago, all of the items on my online order were listed as "awaiting shipment". Would that not mean that they were all in and waiting to go? If an item were unavailable I would have expected it to be listed differently from the other items.
No action was taken on my order until I left two phone messages after a 2 day old e-mail of mine went unanswered. It is highly coincidental that on the same day I left two phone messages, my e-mail was suddenly answered and the shipment was miraculously available to be sent.
Consequently, I am having difficulty believing your honesty in this situation. Unfortunately I can do no more than take you at your word.
However, I do believe Paizo needs to better organize it's shipping and client communication system to match the volume of product it is now selling and the diversity of clients it is now serving.
Knowing that Paizo does not accurately communicate the status of orders, it is doubtful that I will order anything from Paizo in the future where receiving a shipment on time is an important factor.
Chief Technical Officer
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Mirrikat, you raise some good points; certainly, we'd like communication with our customers to be flawless, so maybe you can help advise us on where we could have communicated things differently.
As I stated in my first post, I purposely avoided an item that was listed as "Out of Stock" so that there would not be a delay. The item was a green and brown velvet gamers bag. I switched to a green and silver gamers bag that was listed as "In Stock". (As it turns out, according to your explanation, I probably could have had the Brown and Green bag in the same time frame anyway so I might as well have ordered it.)
I'm assuming you mean that the brown and green bag was listed, as it is now, as "currently unavailable." This doesn't just mean that it's not in our warehouse - it means that it's also not in our main distributor's warehouse, and, in fact, you can't even add it to your cart until we receive notification that our distributor had restocked it.
The only messaging we have that indicates whether something is in our warehouse is when you view your cart. Beneath each item, you'll see a note that says "usually ships from our warehouse within x business days." If the number is 1, it's in our warehouse. If the number is higher than 1, we have to order it from the manufacturer, or from one of our distributors. The product you ordered was one of the worst-case scenarios - it was only available in the East Coast warehouse of our main distributor, so it had the highest possible shipping time to us. We've just revised the quoted times for things shipping from manufacturers; I will have the web team double-check the estimated times we give for orders from distribution, especially if it's coming from the East Coast.
However, I would have expected an e-mail from paizo within a couple of days if an item I'd ordered was truly not available. That way I would have been able to make an informed decision about continuing with the order.
This is definitely an area we can improve. We just began a discussion last night about ways to improve turnaround time for store orders; I'll make sure that improving communication is added to that discussion.
As of 5 days ago, all of the items on my online order were listed as "awaiting shipment". Would that not mean that they were all in and waiting to go? If an item were unavailable I would have expected it to be listed differently from the other items.
That message just means that that part of the order hasn't shipped out to you; it doesn't indicate anything about stocking. We can look into changing that.
No action was taken on my order until I left two phone messages after a 2 day old e-mail of mine went unanswered. It is highly coincidental that on the same day I left two phone messages, my e-mail was suddenly answered and the shipment was miraculously available to be sent.
It is coincidental. It's a busy time of year, and our turnaround on e-mail queries is not at our target, which is one business day.
....maybe you can help advise us on where we could have communicated things differently.
I believe I already did.
I'm assuming you mean that the brown and green bag was listed,as it is now, as "currently unavailable."
Yes, that's what I meant. So apparently I still couldn't have received it anyway so I am still better of having ordered the green and silver one instead.
The only messaging we have that indicates whether something is in our warehouse is when you view your cart. Beneath each item, you'll see a note that says "usually ships from our warehouse within x business days." If the number is 1, it's in our warehouse. If the number is higher than 1, we have to order it from the manufacturer, or from one of our distributors.
Thank you for explaining that for me. It wasn't obvious to me that the "usually ships from our warehouse with x business days" was a number that would vary from product to product.
I'm glad Paizo is looking at turnaround time.
I also would really appreciate it if Paizo had some way of distinguishing between items that are ready to ship vs. items that the consumer is still waiting for. This would give me a much better understanding of why I haven't received my order yet.
It may also allow for other options. As I said before some retailers allow you to have part of your order shipped so that you can receive at least part of the order quickly.
Thank you for your detailed responses.
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Chief Technical Officer
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So apparently I still couldn't have received it anyway so I am still better of having ordered the green and silver one instead.
Yes - you actually couldn't have ordered the other one if you had wanted to, as the "add to cart" button isn't present unless we have a current source for stock.
It wasn't obvious to me that the "usually ships from our warehouse with x business days" was a number that would vary from product to product.
Do you think it would help if the numbers only were in bold, maybe?
Or is there anything you can suggest to make it more apparent?Also, we just revised the number of days we quote for products coming from our main distributor to more accurately reflect shipping during the holidays.
I also would really appreciate it if Paizo had some way of distinguishing between items that are ready to ship vs. items that the consumer is still waiting for. This would give me a much better understanding of why I haven't received my order yet.
The web team has just modified the order history page so that it will indicate "Ready to Ship" for items that are in our warehouse, and "Awaiting Product" for items that we haven't received yet. This change won't roll out until next week, though.
...some retailers allow you to have part of your order shipped so that you can receive at least part of the order quickly.
That's been on the to-do list for a long time - we will make it a higher priority.
Thanks very much for your suggestions!
-Vic.
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Wow, I'm impressed! Thanks for the responses and I'm glad to know my concerns are being heard and are possibly helping to fuel changes.
Do you think it would help if the numbers only were in bold, maybe?
Or is there anything you can suggest to make it more apparent?
Well, I'm sure I saw the numbers. I read them once and just didn't realize they varied between products. Maybe adding a note after the part where it says "Usually ships in x business days" that reads "Date to ship varies between items depending on warehouse availability" ...or something like that.
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Senior Software Developer
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The web team has just modified the order history page so that it will indicate "Ready to Ship" for items that are in our warehouse, and "Awaiting Product" for items that we haven't received yet. This change won't roll out until next week, though.
We went ahead and rolled this out now because there were a couple other bug fixes related to the new Top Sellers boxes that we wanted to fix anyway. You may need to sign out and sign back in to see the change if you check your order history in the next hour or so.
Well, I got my order! Yay. In time to wrap and put under the tree.