Back Orders

[Angella]

Is there a possibility there could be a drop down in the order editor to mark a single item as back order, then an email automatically sent to the customer. This is an area we do manually and is difficult sometimes to keep on top of. It is important to keep the customer updated and I feel this would help us improve our customer service.

Angella
www.internetwigs.com

[Gillf]

I agree....

Gillf
www.ever-so-sexy.com

[Rich]

This is an area we can consider for the future, but I would say there's probably no need for a drop-down or method of marking. A product is automatically a back order when it's pending with no stock, marking it as such would be an unnecessary step. The reason we haven't put an automatic email in before is that it's really a personal choice per retailer as to how they want to handle orders which can't immediately be satisfied.

If the system is working the way it should, the customer should be aware at the point of order that a particular item is either low in stock or out of stock - and that they're effectively submitting a back order. I'd appreciate a little more information on this one regarding the kind of email your sending out, and when it's being sent out. Some feature improvements, such as this one, have to be carefully considered so that they can be made to fit the general requirements of the widest range of users.

[Angella]

We buy our products daily from the warehouse as we currently have over 1,000 products on-line with sometimes 25-30 variants od colours, so we could not possibly stock all these. When the orders arrive, we call our warehouse, they then give me any information such as back orders, this is when it would apply via the order editor.

Most customers are happy to wait the 7-10 days, but an auto email would improve things.

[Andrew]

It would be a great feature to have, we too spend an enormous amount of time emailing people about backorder status and we have many thousands of variants that are impossible to keep in stock.

[little-linguist]

To add to this (similar topic), we'd find it very useful if there was some kind of warning that notified customers at the checkout that some of their items are out of stock / or special order items. It never ceases to amaze me the number of customers who claim that they weren't aware something was out of stock at the time of ordering even though the status is indicated on the product description page and again alongside the item in the basket. I guess it would need to be quite drastic such as a pop up type message. Any thoughts?

[Dave]

To add to this (similar topic), we'd find it very useful if there was some kind of warning that notified customers at the checkout that some of their items are out of stock / or special order items. It never ceases to amaze me the number of customers who claim that they weren't aware something was out of stock at the time of ordering even though the status is indicated on the product description page and again alongside the item in the basket. I guess it would need to be quite drastic such as a pop up type message. Any thoughts?

We have asked Richard before for a pop-up at checkout stage but for a different reason and it was not possible.

Does the customers order receipt e-mail not show product out of stock?

You could wrap the product out of stock message in html code to make it bold and stand out more?

Regards,

Dave

[little-linguist]

We have asked Richard before for a pop-up at checkout stage but for a different reason and it was not possible.

Does the customers order receipt e-mail not show product out of stock?

You could wrap the product out of stock message in html code to make it bold and stand out more?

Regards,

Dave

Thanks for letting me know Dave. We have tried bold and red before (and both together) but they just don't bother reading it. Grrrrr!

[Rich]

Thanks for letting me know Dave. We have tried bold and red before (and both together) but they just don't bother reading it. Grrrrr!

In my many years' experience as a Web Developer, "people" (generalising of course) never read what's on the screen in front of them. You can put it in size 50 font, bold, red and flashing - and it will get ignored completely.

I think you have to simply accept that a certain percentage of people will always "click first and ask questions later".

[Dave]

In my many years' experience as a Web Developer, "people" (generalising of course) never read what's on the screen in front of them. You can put it in size 50 font, bold, red and flashing - and it will get ignored completely.

I think you have to simply accept that a certain percentage of people will always "click first and ask questions later".

Yes I have to agree with Richard. I used to work for a software house writing backend systems and for mission critical routines such as period and year end routines and important payroll procedures we used to code

Continue?
Are you sure you want to run this option?
Are you really sure you want to run this option?

Some customers would answer yes to all three of the above and then call our support desk and say I have just run this program but I didn't want to run it yet as I have not printed x,y and z

Regards,

Dave

[paul]

Some feature improvements, such as this one, have to be carefully considered so that they can be made to fit the general requirements of the widest range of users.

we have a great piece of software here which is improving all the time. i agree that adding every customisation requested, whilst it might satisfy a number of users, might also confuse others or worse work against them.

Due to the vast amount of configuarion available in this software i think most of us forget this is an 'off the shelf' package and not bespoke software for which we would all be paying tens of thousands of pounds - and believe you me ive seen the prices!

[little-linguist]

In my many years' experience as a Web Developer, "people" (generalising of course) never read what's on the screen in front of them. You can put it in size 50 font, bold, red and flashing - and it will get ignored completely.

I think you have to simply accept that a certain percentage of people will always "click first and ask questions later".

Yes, I agree you're right. Silly, annoying customers........