I ordered an item from an online retailer t’other week. Money came off the card pretty much instantly. 5 days and 3 working days later they mail to say the item was not in stock and wouldn’t be for over a month and what did I want to do.

I cancelled and wait with interest to see when the funds appear back in my account

I’m certain they’re not trying to fleece me but its pretty ropey to advertise stuff as available that you don’t have.

Anyone else had similar hassle?

Winstanleys?

Yeah, I had this, some shops, rightly or wrongly, seem to have their online payment systems set up to instantly debit your money, regardless.

Worse yet, it happened to me with a shop whose ‘stock’ was just whatever Madison had on their website as technically the shop could source it. Cue confused phonecalls about parts the shop had never heard of despite advertising on their site, grrrrr.

I think its pretty shady. The stuff is still showing up on their site. Apparently web sales are not linked to stock control. Why not wait until you’ve got a system that works before you go into business?

Some of the bigger shops dont charge until the items dispatched, which is a better way of doing it.

Had it before brought instock items then got email a week later to say it would be a month for stock… Crap imo

This happened to me. Ordered some hope Hoops from Winstanleys online, they took the money right away (they also said they had them in stock), I still hadn’t received the wheels after 6 weeks. I phoned them loads and they kept giving me delivery dates. In the end I gave up and got a refund.

pretty sure its actually illegal to take money from your account unless the goods are ready for immediate despatch??

might be worth checking this out (trading standards / distance selling regulations) to avoid it happening again in the future..

had it with unitybikes.de …
item (bashguard) was shown as in stock…but wasn´t..never got it..
since one year I try to get my money back….

..never got it..
since one year I try to get my money back..

Get the card company to get the money back

pretty sure its actually illegal to take money from your account unless the goods are ready for immediate despatch

Pretty sure they can, within reason, not a good policy all the same

Sometimes it could be an admin error but a lot of smaller places don’t have big transactional systems monitoring stock vs sales on their sites. And yes it does break distance selling regulations and yes you can charge the money back from a credit card within a certain period.

Also it’s usually how they deal with it that shows the quality of the vendor.

🙂

Most payments made online are transacted by a 3rd party – the site hosts have nothing at all to do with ‘taking your money’ usually. and its why payments are taken instantly.

Think of paypal – funds are moved instantly from account to account and many sites use this method.

A good vendor will notice, e-mail the customer with options and make a refund asap if out of stock and no alternative found.

Show some common sense guys, your expecting every small online seller to have time / staff to go through orders manually transacting them?

Lots of online retailers sell stuff they don’t have, like Wiggle,

Available in 24hours, They have it,

Available in 2-3days our suppliers have it and will send it next day, then we’ll send it next day.

Fine in my eyes if they are honest that you will get it in 3-5 days

The reason I only buy from folk I know have in stock when they say they have it in stock.

pretty sure its actually illegal to take money from your account unless the goods are ready for immediate despatch??

Pretty sure they can.

During a recession this is going to happen more. Shop cannot afford to hold large amounts of unsold stock With the variety of stuff we could order any shop claiming to have ‘everything’ is either totally huge/rich or telling porkies.
Simple economics really. But It doesn’t stop it be dishonest. I have been the victim of these sorts of things before.
If I don’t got a notification of dispatch 3 working days after ordering it I start hassling, I am that annoying. 6 Weeks is barmy? That’s more than a postage delay.