Major part of order not in stock. Still paying shipping for rest?

JimmyTheWig

Hi,

What would you expect to happen in this situation?

Needed a bulb for a fish tank.
Looked online and the cheapest place (including shipping) happened to be an online pharmacy.
As we were placing an order anyway (and paying fixed shipping costs) we decided to add some hayfevor tablets to the order.

Order arrives a few days later. The bulb was out of stock and they can't get hold of them. Grrr.
They've sent the tablets and will refund the cost of the bulb.

My problem is that we've now paid out shipping costs for just the tablets which were an afterthought. We wouldn't have necessarily ordered these tablets if it wasn't for the bulb.

Have contacted the company, asking for the shipping costs to be refunded, and they either appear to not understand my point or are deliberately not understanding. In either case they are not refunding the shipping costs.

Is this reasonable?
Anything more anyone would do?


Thanks,
Jim

pulliptears

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Hi,

What would you expect to happen in this situation?

Needed a bulb for a fish tank.
Looked online and the cheapest place (including shipping) happened to be an online pharmacy.
As we were placing an order anyway (and paying fixed shipping costs) we decided to add some hayfevor tablets to the order.

Order arrives a few days later. The bulb was out of stock and they can't get hold of them. Grrr.
They've sent the tablets and will refund the cost of the bulb.

My problem is that we've now paid out shipping costs for just the tablets which were an afterthought. We wouldn't have necessarily ordered these tablets if it wasn't for the bulb.

Have contacted the company, asking for the shipping costs to be refunded, and they either appear to not understand my point or are deliberately not understanding. In either case they are not refunding the shipping costs.

Is this reasonable?
Anything more anyone would do?


Thanks,
Jim

Had a similar experience with Topman a few years ago. Ordered about a dozen items from their sale for DS, what I actually received for about £4 P+P was one pair of socks because everything else was suddenly out of stock.

It annoyed me, I emailed them and asked why I hadn't been told that the majority of my item was OOS because I really wasn't happy at paying £4 to receive a £1 pair of socks. They apologised and refunded the P+P.

I agree though if part of an order is OOS I do feel companies should contact you and give you the option of cancellation.

somethingcorporate

It's harsh but not really the pharmacy's fault - you could have been buying some hayfever tablets with the bulb as an after-thought. Intentions are not always obvious to a shop processing orders!

Could you try sending them back under DSRs? You'll get a refund for your initial shipping then.

It would be good customer service to call you.

JimmyTheWig

pulliptears wrote: »

They apologised and refunded the P+P.

That's good customer service. What I'd expect (or at least a partial refund) as a goodwill gesture.

somethingcorporate wrote: »

It's harsh but not really the pharmacy's fault - you could have been buying some hayfever tablets with the bulb as an after-thought. Intentions are not always obvious to a shop processing orders!

I totally agree. Which is why your last point...

It would be good customer service to call you.

... is so relevant.
We had an email from them to say the order was on its way. The email had a link that we could click to see the status of the order. No point, as it's on its way, we thought.
It was only by clicking this link that we could have found out that the bulb wasn't coming! They could have at least mentioned it in their email.

Could you try sending them back under DSRs? You'll get a refund for your initial shipping then.

I agree. I presume that medicines are not excluded.
But there are three problems with this...
1. We were expecting the tablets to arrive and so as it happened finished the last one in the last box the day before. So on the morning the tablets arrived we needed to open them.
2. It just so happens that the cost of the tablets plus the shipping we paid was actually good value. So we don't actually want to return them!
3. Although they would refund the shipping costs that we've paid, we would still have to pay to post them back. Not much for a few boxes of tablets, but that's not the point.

Would have been nice, at least, for them to have offered this as a suggestion. They haven't.

I understand that point 2 makes the whole thing slightly irrelevant. We've got something that we needed at a good price. It's the idea of it as much as anything.

somethingcorporate

I completely understand, and you are absolutely right. It comes down to a customer service and care issue. Some companies care about it and would refund this without giving it a second thought to keep you happy. Others would stick 2 fingers up and dare you to take it further.

For the sake of a couple of quid postage it's probably worth naming and shaming and moving on.

Wywth

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Hi,

What would you expect to happen in this situation?

Needed a bulb for a fish tank.
Looked online and the cheapest place (including shipping) happened to be an online pharmacy.
As we were placing an order anyway (and paying fixed shipping costs) we decided to add some hayfevor tablets to the order.

Order arrives a few days later. The bulb was out of stock and they can't get hold of them. Grrr.
They've sent the tablets and will refund the cost of the bulb.

My problem is that we've now paid out shipping costs for just the tablets which were an afterthought. We wouldn't have necessarily ordered these tablets if it wasn't for the bulb.

Have contacted the company, asking for the shipping costs to be refunded, and they either appear to not understand my point or are deliberately not understanding. In either case they are not refunding the shipping costs.

Is this reasonable?
Anything more anyone would do?


Thanks,
Jim

Unless the terms agreed that the order would not be dispatched until all items were available (in which case I wouldn't want any money taken until all items were confirmed as available for dispatch and would need to be prepared to wait possibly weeks, months, years for the order) then I would expect the supplier to ship the items they did have available and advise the items not currently available (and so allow either party to cancel those ordered items not available)

Where a single delivery charge applies, I would expect this to be applied even if only 1 item was delivered. So in this case I think you will be extremely lucky to get any refund of the delivery charge.

DSR's presumably apply to the order, and if so you can return it for a full refund