V Day 20% off Auto Atlanta order, left hanging in the wind Options

[johnnie5]

So I decided to order a dash cover (fabric) from AA on Valentines Day @ 20% off. I placed the order and received a conformation email and all. So 10 days have gone by, and no cover. So I call over there and am told the item is backordered, and being that it is, the order was cancelled. I received no follow up email or any other info or attempt to be contacted other than the order conformation. Hmmmmmm....

I was even asked if I wanted to re-order the item at full price when I called them to see where my order was. Hmmmmmmm....

My reply was "no thanks", and I hung up - annoyed. I went directly to Evil Bay, and placed an order for half the price of the discounted rate, even after shipping.

[zonedoubt]

This seems like a good time to throw out my suggestions for making the AA shopping experience better. I read and understood the terms of the Valentine's Day Sale so have no complaints there, but there are some steps that seem to missing from AA's order process. (And yes, I have brought these up before with AA so this isn't me just venting here.)

1) Show stock availability on the web-site. Pelican Parts does it, so do many other Porsche/VW parts sites. So why can't AA?

2) The email confirmation at time of order is nice, but it's just an automatically generated sales order showing what was in the "shopping cart". OK, but isn't useful info. How about following up the auto-response with a sales order showing what is in stock, and what is backordered. That will give the customer a chance to ask for a "ship and backorder" or cancel items or whatever.

3) Let me know when the items have shipped and provide me with a tracking number. It would be nice to get this without having to ask for it.

4) No FedEx or USPS ground to Canada? Huh? Help out your brothers to the north who get stiffed by courier brokerage charges. How about a shipping rate schedule that the customer can look at, you know so much freight for such and such an order amount, etc. How about free shipping above a certain amount? I just hate getting jacked by surprise shipping charges.

5) Twice I've ordered and specified the "ship to" address as different to "bill to". But both times it got shipped to the "bill to". I like to get my deliveries to my work address and not have to call the courier to reroute the package after waiting for the mandatory one unsuccessful delivery.

6) Provide a mechanism for allowing customers to check the status of their order online. Yeah of course can pick up the phone and call, but isn't the point of an e-store to eliminate the phone calls.