Can’t Provide A Tracking Number? Let Me Cancel!
Hi just a rant here, if you run a website and have to offer customer service keep this in mind, as this is how the little guys can compete and even outperform the big guys.
I have noticed a scary trend with some online retailers recently. Overstock.com will not let you cancel an order once it has been placed period. Their reasoning is that “the orders go to the warehouse so quickly that we can not cancel the orders” That’s funny to me because I placed a pre-order for an item and then decided to get it locally instead and they would not let me cancel even though the item wasn’t scheduled to ship for 2 weeks! Then just this last week I ordered something from Motorola, I got a call from their service department saying that my billing info didn’t match and that I needed to call and fix it. Well I was going to be leaving town and decided I could not wait for the order any long so I called up and asked them to cancel my order. “I’m sorry sir we can not cancel this order because it has already been sent to our shipment processor” I told her that I thought that was really funny since I had gotten the message that my billing information was not valid. She said they had called my credit card company and cleared the shipping address and that my order was already on the way. So I asked for my tracking number…….”ummm I am unable to provide that to you at this time”. So you say my order is on the way and I can not cancel, however you can not provide me a tracking number?? That’s just wrong.
If you run an online store please do not copy the poor customer service that these large companies and their outsourced to india (we’ll get to this in another rant) customer service team is providing. If you take an order, allow the person to cancel the order until you have shipped it and can provide them a tracking number. It can be no other way with online retailing.