What's up with 21oz water bottles and poor customer service experience

[Werickson24]

Hey all,

During the cyber monday rush I had thrown a cart together that I handed off to my parents for Christmas stuff. I definitely saw the huge demand they got, certainly overwhelming them. However the order we got quickly switched to "label created, waiting for package", and then sat like that for the next 20-ish days. My parent reached out inquiring about the weird status and got brushed off with no information and a short annoyed response. It took a second email to get a more helpful response, saying they'll look into it, and most of our stuff got moving around a week after that. But as of today, we're still missing the bottle and have had no communication about it. By looking at the website myself, I can see that all 21oz bottles are out of stock, and it now says back-ordered on our order, so what's going on there? It was certainly in-stock when we ordered. The poor communication is really the main issue.

I adore LTT and the great quality and service Linus strives for, but the slow shipping (understandable), unclear statuses, rude response, and lack of transparency all at once has honestly ruined LTT's reputation for my parents (their words not mine), and is really not making me feel fuzzy about them either, especially when seeing how Linus portrays their support on WAN show. Again I want to reiterate that it's not my goal to bash the customer service team, especially when it was during a difficult time, but they need to straighten out their processes and make sure to send accurate (and polite) information out to their customers.

 

Thanks for listening, I really wanted to get this out of my system as it has left a bad taste in my mouth, and stopped me from buying one of the recent launches.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

17 minutes ago, Werickson24 said:

By looking at the website myself, I can see that all 21oz bottles are out of stock, and it now says back-ordered on our order, so what's going on there? It was certainly in-stock when we ordered.

Most inventory systems are like that. When you click "place order", it doesn't mean that inventory in the system gets reserved for you. In a perfect world, it does, but we're not there yet for most marketplaces. 

[AbsoluteWoo]

16 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Most inventory systems are like that. When you click "place order", it doesn't mean that inventory in the system gets reserved for you. In a perfect world, it does, but we're not there yet for most marketplaces. 

Sorry but this is just poor design. There’s no reason for the inventory system to work like this other than just poor design.

[Werickson24]

I agree with both of you, many systems do reserve inventory, but if they don't at the very least it should be clearly communicated to people who place orders when something is in stock, but goes out.

[Birblover12]

Sounds like a job for @Adam Pilolla. Sounds like your package probably just got missed, but hopefully it gets rectified soon!

[Adam Pilolla]

Hi @Werickson24, feel free to send me a DM if you'd like me to take a second look at this interaction. I'm sorry to hear about the issues but hopefully we can figure out a way to fix this for you!

[Lomac]

12 hours ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Sorry but this is just poor design. There’s no reason for the inventory system to work like this other than just poor design.

 

12 hours ago, Werickson24 said:

I agree with both of you, many systems do reserve inventory, but if they don't at the very least it should be clearly communicated to people who place orders when something is in stock, but goes out.

Most systems do track live or live-ish inventory. Some are instantaneous, others rely on periodic inventory tracking updates throughout the day. Many have built in margins that allow the company to keep an amount held in reserve and isn't counted towards their total sellable on hands, usually to help account for warranty coverage and hidden damage that hasn't been discovered yet. It's possible the system their distributor has doesn't use real time tracking and it sold into the negative before a periodic update, or perhaps a certain build lot was later discovered to be damaged when they went to pick it, or even their last cycle count was incorrect and the assumption they had more on hand was wrong. Shit unfortunately happens at all levels of business regardless of size.

[FFLORO]

@Adam Pilolla any idea when will there be any 21oz water bottles available? I keep waiting to use my backpack code with that order, but there's no real info on the availability of them yet