‘tis the season to be merry..?
Well it all depends on your outlook of course.. Now me being caught up in the ‘Christmas rush’ to sort things before the ‘big day’ or as I read in a trade magazine the other week “the giving season” (cynical or what?) I this week decided to buy my two children a Nintendo DS each (yes extravagant I know – but please don’t lecture me) – easy I thought – plenty of TV adverts and press pages devoted to is so it must be easy to get hold of – totally wrong. You can’t get them for love nor money unless you pay silly prices. The normal street price is £99.00, but at a recent point I saw they are going on Play.com and Amazon.co.uk for over £220.00 ridiculous! I am not paying that amount. BTW this is the “traders” on these sites selling at this price, not the host sites. I have not even looked on any auction site although I did read that one Nintendo Wii had changed hands at over £1,000! I don’t use auction sites since I was ripped of by a thief a year ago – I wonder how many others have had that experience. (BTW Nintendo have withdrawn the TV advertising for the Wii as they cannot supply the demand – very good of them – now how about doing the same for the DS?)
Anyway after surfing many webpages and visiting all the sites I know that they could be available from I drew a complete blank on any site that had any stock : - ( but then somebody suggested a site that I had not considered and bingo! They were stating “New. Usually ships in 24 hours“. Great I though and duly placed the order. Fantastic – the presents that I want for my Children in time for Christmas day… but then on Monday I checked the order status and now one of them is “Back ordered”! WHAT! How come they are saying basically it’s in stock and now I have ordered it, it’s on ‘back order’?? The other very annoying thing is that the sales page was still saying the same as it was when I ordered it and yet my order status is saying something different? Outrageous! This has also happened to me at another site in the past – the site says ‘in stock’ but the reality is different – I waited six weeks for something that was in stock but after I had paid my money it was suddenly not in stock.
Dodgy dealers, inept management or poor websites? Well in some cases all three but the two sites I am talking about are big popular (one worldwide) sites and I think the reason is poor websites as in they do not have a live stock system linked to the sites, so that when the site says ‘in stock’ it is and when you place an order the stock level is reduced by your order, so that when in fact the site is out of stock the site says ‘out of stock’ and gives you a true reflection of the situation. In the case of this international website there is NO excuse that they don’t have this system in place and is in fact very poor. I am pleased to say that Just Flight and Just Trains have a live stock system linked to its sites so this issue should never befall you when ordering from us.
Anyway I am hoping that my two Children will have their DS’s for Christmas day otherwise both they and I will be very upset – at present the website has mailed me after I complained saying one has been despatched today and the other one is due into their warehouse on the 14th – fingers crossed they deliver in reality as they have not done in the virtual world.
Till the next time, keep safe.
Scotty.
Posted by: Scotty, in: Musings of Scotty
which means that it is unlikely to arrive for the 25th, so I have been exploring other sources over the past weekend - time will tell if Santa is able to deliver on time or not - so far Gamestop get my thumbs down for their misleading and in my mind deceptive description of “in stock”. If it had shown out of stock I would not have placed the order and if it had shown no stock I would have had more time to explore alternatives. I will keep you posted on the outcome.
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