Subject:
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There must be a better way to deal with lost orders...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Jan 2002 06:21:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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690 times
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Well, I have to grumble...
I don't do it often, and frankly, I'm of the opinion that Lego Direct
has been doing an excellent job overall. I haven't spent so much on
Lego in all the years (32) I've been playing/collecting it as I have
since "discovering" Lego Direct. Still, today's incident just demands
a grumble...
A week-and-a-half before Christmas, I read about the return of Fort
Legorado and thought: Hey! Great gift for my son! I had a also been
toying with the idea of making a mosaic of both our kids to give to my
wife for Christmas. I wasn't too sure about doing this, but the Fort
Legorado deal put me over the edge. I spent a couple of night, after
my wife had gone to sleep, trying to create a mosaic of my son. His
very light blonde hair on a light background made this a very
frustrating experience. I was running out of time and finally gave up
an went with a mosaic of my daughter (dark hair) which went reasonably
well. So I posted my results, added the Fort Legorado kit to my
shopping basket and selected express shipping (since I was out of
time). I posted it shortly after midnight and called in a credit card
number as soon as I got to work that morning.
I wish, in hind sight, that I had written down the name of the person
who took the credit card number, but I didn't. Not that I have any
intention of giving them heck, but I would love to know what actually
happened. Anyway, I gave them the credit card information and they
confirmed for me that there was a truck leaving for Canada that
afternoon and that I had just made it in under the wire. Whew! The
following morning (8:05 am) I received an "E-mail Order Confirmation"
detailing my order (#U0283417) and so I just sat back and waited.
Friday rolled around and still no Lego. I'm worried, but I'm also
known for my complacency and, after all, I did have an e-mail
confirmation and a verbal confirmation that I was still OK to catch
the last truck to Canada before Christmas. In order to prevent my wife
and son from seeing the package (or more to the point - hearing it) I
had it shipped to work figuring that it would arrive before we closed
down for the holidays. In desperation, I went to work Christmas Eve,
posted a note on the door to ask that the package be delivered next
door and went off to the local post office to confirm that it was on
delivery. They had no record of it so I went home.
At this point, I'm thinking it probably missed the truck and it serves
me right since I did insist on spending a couple of nights trying
various pictures of my son in order to produce a decent mosaic. Had I
given up earlier, the rest of the order would have been in that much
sooner. So it will arrive between Christmas and New Year's day. They
will now be New Year's presents instead, so I just put a note in my
wife's and son's cards saying the elves were a little bit behind
schedule. Both the following Friday and New Year's Eve I contacted the
post office again, still no package.
Today, my first day back to work, I checked with the post office again
to no avail. At this point, my complacency has run out, so I called
S@H. The person who answered, (and who was very helpful FWIW) looked
up my order and informed my that it had been canceled on the 28th. I
was speechless. The first thing they suggested/guessed at is that the
credit card was declined. I pointed out that I only had $280 on a
$10,000 credit limit so there was no chance of that. The second
suggestion/guess was that the credit card information was never
posted. I've placed (I think) 5 orders over the last year, all with
the same credit card, so even if they had transcribed the number
incorrectly, they should still be able to look it up. It still leaves
me wondering why I received an order confirmation. The person on the
phone offered to help me re-create my order, so we started to, only to
add insult to injury when she confirmed that the mosaic which I had
wasted so much time on had been purged from the system when it wasn't
shipped after a while.
I'm writing all this (sorry it's so long winded) mainly just to vent
some frustration. I'm too ticked off to tackle the Mosaics again
tonight. I would, however appreciate it if someone could take the time
to give me some answers to some general questions that this incident
has brought up.
1) With regards to the Brick-o-lizer:
Is there/could there be a downloadable version? There is a
fairly large lag between when you adjust a control and when you see
the results. Given that it's only a 48x48 (I think) grid (mosaic) in
only 5 shades of gray, I can't believe it takes that long to process.
I have to assume the delays stem from transmission times to and from
the Lego web site. I suppose for most people this isn't a big deal,
but in cases like my son's where the hair colour is blonde almost to
the point of matching (in gray scale) a white background, the
seemingly endless adjustments to brightness and contrast, reloading of
other images, more adjustments, etc. is a real pain.
Processing it locally and then uploading the result would be much
faster. This is especially true for those of us (and again, I
acknowledge that I'm in the minority) who are preparing these as gifts
and have to do all this after the intended recipient is in bed.
Also on the subject of the Brick-o-lizer. Even if you can't make it
downloadable, the web version could stand two major enhancements:
a) on the contrast and brightness controls, add increment and
decrement buttons so that you can change the settings by a value of
one either way. I frequently found that when I was trying to find that
point where the background would be treated as white and my son's hair
would be treated as light gray, I was moving the slider by what
appeared to be more than one increment at a time. It's difficult to
control a mouse with that much precision. Simply clicking a button to
increase of decrease a value by one would take the guess work out of
it. It would also let the user now for certain if the Brick-o-lizer
can, in fact, resolve two slightly different shades. If you change a
value by one and both shades change simultaneously, then you know
there's no hope of getting the Brick-o-lizer to resolve them. I found
myself trying the same adjustment over and over again because I could
never be completely sure if I move the slider by only one value or
two.
b) Another nice enhancement would be the ability to point to a
pixel and declare a gray-scale value for it. It would have been so
much easier if I could have just pointed at a pixel in the background
and declared it to be white, then pointed to a pixel in my son's hair
and declared it to be light gray and let the Brick-o-lizer adjust
brightness and contrast setting for the whole picture accordingly.
2) With regard to the E-mail Order Confirmation:
What does this document *really* mean? I interpreted it to
mean that my order had been processed for shipment, although not
necessarily shipped. The person I talked to today said that it
actually means that an order has been essentially placed in a shopping
cart but is pending payment and since my credit card information seems
to have disappeared, the order was never actually processed. Nowhere
in the e-mail does it say anything to the effect of "your order has
been posted and is awaiting payment. Please contact Customer Service
to arrange payment." The only reference to Customer Service is that I
should have an order number handy if I want to contact them with a
*question*. Had there been something in the e-mail either stating or
implying that the order was awaiting payment, I would have called them
immediately. As it is presented, these order confirmations don't give
any hint that there might be any sort of problem with an order.
I am, by the way, assuming that these are computer generated form
letters and that the same format is used for everyone's order
confirmations.
3) If you can send me an e-mail order confirmation, why can't you send
me and e-mail "You have an order on hold, pending payment" or "Your
order will be canceled within 48 hours if we don't hear from you" type
of message?
4) A voice inquiry before deleting my order would have been really
nice. Mind you, I can understand why this might not be possible given
the volume of business you must be handling just before Christmas, but
there's still no excuse for not having an automated item #3.
5) I think there's a need for an automated warning before deleting a
mosaic. Some of these things require a lot of trial and error before
getting something that's half way decent. Giving people 24 or even 48
hours notice (by e-mail) before deleting the file would save a lot of
aggravation.
6) If a credit card is declined for any reason (incorrect number or
overdrawn) couldn't someone phone the party back? I know in my case
there was no way it was overdrawn, but if they wrote the number down
wrong or lost it altogether, they could at least call me back. Come to
think of it, why isn't this being entered and cleared while the
customer is on the phone? Granted, Lego doesn't bill the customer
until they ship the product, but it seems to me, back when I was
working for Radio Shack, that there was a way to check the remaining
credit on a credit card without actually posting a transaction. This
wouldn't prevent a card from being declined three weeks later when an
out-of-stock product is finally shipped, but it would help in most
circumstances. Come to think of it, there must be numerous times when
an order is placed on backorder and, by the time the product ships,
the credit card is overdrawn. Surely you don't just cancel the orders
without notifying the customer? This is something that needs to be
done.
Well, I can't say I feel a whole lot better now, but at least I got it
off my chest. I'd dearly love to know what actually happened in my
case, although I can understand where LD likely wouldn't want to
discuss customer account specifics in an open forum, but as I said
near the start, I would appreciate it if my more general concerns were
addressed.
Happy New Year one and all.
(and, again, sorry for the long message)
Matthias Jetleb
Scarborough
Canada
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