With the move to online and click and collect services many companies are doing a good job showing what inventory is at what shop.
One one side Chemwarehouse has been almost brutally accurate if a particular shop has ‘the product’ when ordered - although it might go out of stock between order and being picked; they don’t process the charge until it is picked.
Then Spotlight. The Melbourne shops cannot keep anything straight. It might be in stock (or not) but they cannot find it or as it seems, sometimes they cannot be bothered to look.
And on the far side is Baby Bunting. We wanted a few products and they were all out of stock throughout Melbourne, save for one shop showing ‘low stock’. Prior to ordering online for delivery we hoped to have a look at a display to assure it was what we needed. Visiting the closest Baby Bunting, they had plenty of stock of everything we wanted, no worries, brilliant in-shop service. Too bad their online inventory is incompetent, or planned that way?
Buying click and collect or using online facilities to check stock? Company dependent it can be misleading, and perhaps purposely so to send more orders to their online stores at the expense of the bricks and mortars?
Need to know about stock? Seems for some companies ringing the shop is the only reliable way.
Big W got a Fail from me. I was looking for bathroom scales (consulted Choice test first), then found the local range was very limited. After research I decided on House & Home from Big W. On-line said our local store didn’t have any. Later it said they had stock, so I called in, fortunately we had other business to justify the trip - nil on shelves.
Next trip, checked on-line - Yes - they had stock. Again, nil on shelves, asked a staff member who rang the back office - No - never received and not getting any.
Next trip, after checking on-line and nearly doing a click & collect to see what I would get … they had stock! And $1 cheaper than originally posted. It took about 3 months.
This has been a hobby horse of mine for a long time including here on the forum. As a gross generalisation, Australian businesses are woeful incompetent at online selling which is why in my opinion so much of Australia’s online sales are going to overseas merchants.
Perhaps if Gerry Harvey worked more on developing his online presence instead of trying to disrupt the competition, things may have gone better.
I was looking at buying a new TV as our main TV is dying. I was searching for one of Choices recommendations. It amazed me how few hits appeared for businesses carrying the particular big brand model. Even if a business sold just a few of those very expensive (to me) TVs online, the cost of putting their inventory online and keeping it up-to-date would have been justified.
Not sure why there seems to be such a general disdain by retailers for online sales here in Australia. It just doesn’t make sense.
Definitely seen an improvement from Bunning’s, took them forever to get the aisle/location added (staff if they had to look it up had it available)
I got a David Jones gift voucher for my Birthday … for obvious reasons I want to avoid the store if possible but that webshop is truly diabolical, I’m just glad its got a fairly lengthy expiry on it
And even that doesnt always work. I wanted to buy a lens from Digidirect. I knew their stock levels were… variable… so I rang to make sure they had what I wanted. YES! they said. So I put the order in and immediately was emailed with a “sorry we dont have it at the moment, we can refund or you can wait” email. I took the refund.
