Longtime readers of this space will remember the debacle that was last Christmas when many online retailers dropped the ball and failed to deliver promised shipments on time.
This year, they said, we've learned our lessons. Trust us. So I did. And so far, this holiday season is looking ugly online as well.
In recent days I have placed dozens of online orders with my fingers crossed. And I am naming names.
The first to drop the ball was Barnes & Noble, whose online store told me that the book I ordered was in stock and would ship in 24 hours. I crossed that person off my gift list and moved on, only to get an e-mail two days later.
"Despite our efforts, we were unable to ship the following title(s) in the expected time frame . . . "
Umm, is President Clinton running the stockroom? What does "in stock" mean to you? What it means to me is the title is sitting in the warehouse, waiting to go out.
I then fled to toy giant eToys www.etoys.com only to be greeted by a static page saying the site "would be back soon!" Too bad I won't. Can you imagine visiting a "real" store only to find it "gone"?
A few days earlier I had visited Wal-Mart's Web site, which was shuttered for months for redesign, only to find it "gone" as well.
For toys, I then headed to Toys R Us, forgetting that the venerable toy giant had tossed in the delivery towel on toys after last Christmas and has partnered with Amazon.com. I was redirected to Amazon's toy site, where I found quite a nice list of stuff, some of which was actually in stock.
I ordered that stuff successfully, then went over and browsed the Playstation2 page, noting that the site was claiming the hottest item of the year would again be in stock the following day. No back orders, first-come, first-serve. I quickly e-mailed my dad, saying if he happened to be on the page when they were back in stock, to buy me one and he'd be "Grandpa of the Year."
Turns out, of course, 12 hours later he and I both were randomly reloading the Playstation2 page on Amazon when they were released to stock . . . both of us managed to snag a system. (Amazon said its entire stock was gone in 30 seconds.) And Grandpa gets his award.
I then immediately got an e-mail from Amazon noting my order had been received and its status was "Publisher out of stock." About an hour later I got an apology from Amazon, saying my Playstation2 was in stock and would ship. Today I got UPS tracking information that noted my box's exact location as "U.S."
Thinking I would buy a game to go along with my soon-to-be-delivered Playstation2, I headed to Best Buy's online site. I found a few DVD movies for less than 10 bucks but then tried to search for other titles.
"Search is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience."
AARGGGH!
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Next week will start the first of two columns about the best bets in computer software and hardware. The gift guide is better than ever this year.
James Derk is new media editor for The Evansville Courier & Press. His e-mail address is jderk@evansville.net.