Its a random question this, I know, but this just seems a bit strange….

Being a household of two illustraters, we buy a lot of picture frames. Having bought from loads of places, B&Q do by far the best quality. Proper sturdy, clean, British made frames. None of your flimsy Ikea crap

Anyway, I use the B&Q click and collect, order a job lot, then go and pick them up an hour later. Bobs yer aunties live in lover. Usually….

I ordered some the other day from the local B&Q, go and collect them to be told that they’ve apaprently got 60-odd of them in stock but nobody can find them. No worries. refund issued, order from second nearest B&Q. The same happens. System is showing loads in stock, but they’re not there and nobody can find them. I then get a phone call saying that they’ve tried pretty much every store in the North West. All are showing lots of stock, but on going to find them, nobody can find a single one of them. They’ve just wiped literally hundreds and hunderds of them off the system as they’re not actually physically there in any of the stores.

Has anyone else had any experiences like this? With B&Q or anyone else?

It all seems a bit odd to bugger up your stock control to such a degree. And I’ve got a shed-load of prints need framing. Poor me.

Yeah, it can happen, I’ve seen similar several times. eg: Possibly someone’s done an inventory intake on the package SKU rather than an item SKU so instead of 50 picture frames it got entered as 50 boxes.

We ‘lost’ over £100K of stock one day when a new clerk at our Belgian w/h entered a tankerload of chemicals as 1x rather than the 20,000kg that was actually in the tanker.

They’ve just wiped literally hundreds and hunderds of them off the system as they’re not actually physically there in any of the stores.

That’s a step forward from what they usually do when I’ve gone to the store for something that’s shown as in stock but not there. They just shrug and say ‘yeah, the stock control’s crap’ and it stays on the system. But the discrepancy in your case is much bigger than I’ve seen.

Their stock control is indeed crap! I always do click and collect for this very reason. I never take it for granted that because the website says it’s in stock, that means it will be. So I don’t waste a journey.

But even by their usual standards this seems an epic cock up! Showing hundreds in stock in every shop, when they’ve actually got none at all in any of their stores throughout the whole north west

Could be as simple as the reason above or its just not decrementing when purchased so they have not reordered too. Manual fix and hopefully somebody will check what went wrong and fix the bug

Had something similar at Halfords. Wanted to buy a Garmin bike computer. Local store was showing one in stock. Went to collect, that’s when the trouble started.

The one they had in stock was the display item on a Garmin board. Not allowed to sell it. Why is it shown in stock? Dunno. It’s always like that! Expected me to drive home, reorder then make another trip to pick it up.

Complained to Head Office and got no reply.

Just to see what would happen now they’ve apparently knocked them off the system, I’ve just tried to order some more. Its still showing as loads in stock. So It’s let me order, I’ve paid for them and got my order confirmation.

I’ll now await my email or phone call to tell me they haven’t got any in stock.

Hey ho!

My local branch don’t know the meaning of stock control.  All the big bulky stuff is in stock but stuff like door hardware and hinges, no chance.  I’ve seen items that are out of stock for months and the website says they have 8 in stock.  The staff/manager obviously isn’t bothered about the low value items, as long as the paint shelves and power tools are well stocked and the timber is uniformly warped, they are happy!

Expected me to drive home, reorder then make another trip to pick it up.

Complained to Head Office and got no reply.

Ladies and gents the next stw entry to APILN

APILN

They’ll be stuck in an 02 somewhere.

B&Q racking is organised as:

00-ground level. 01-accessible by either Genie lift or aircraft steps. 02-forklift only.

Most likely the pallet is the wrong way round in an 02 shelf so the picking label with the SKUs on can’t be seen & it will only come to light when they stock take that aisle.

I had over £100k of ‘ghost’ stock in my kitchen & bathroom showroom when I was a manager for them, mainly due to poor stock handling.

I had something similar but for tiles.

they said that they were unable to find a huge amount of them and they could no fill my delivery. I asked them what the process was and if they would pull stock from a different store.

Turned out that they had put the items in a different bay in the warehouse so no one could find them. Well it would appear none of the young boys who worked there could but the young girl on site slapped them into order and said they actually had to look rather than give up after 5 min.

Quality of employees as well as systems is not always so great which can lead to problems.

Quality of employees as well as systems is not always so great which can lead to problems.

From a management point of view if your employees break the system your system is broke.

B and q are a filing company for customer satisfaction,customer ordered 14 doors, they arrived ok, all wrapped in cardboard, 6 where badly spray painted, took 5 phone calls and a month to get them replaced with  more doors, 2 where also damaged, and needed to be replaced.

Two doors delivered on friday ,1 damaged,

Then theyve got rid of the over 60,s discount, and the trade discount, both used by me and our older customers, also gone are the trade catalogs, also check price on shelf  marker matches price paid at checkout, quite oftern its a lot less on shelf than you get charged, then a long walk of shame for the staff member to check price  and input new price, all while the queue builds up, due to lack of staff.

They are making a load of overnight replenishment/order fulfilment staff redundant too so expect it to get worse.

I’ve just had my phone call this morning to inform me they’ve none in stock despite their system still showing loads in stock, and helpfully added that none of their other stores have got any in stock, despite the website saying they’ve all got loads in stock too.

And Homebase managed to go bust competing against this? They must have been monumentaly bad!

The other answer is fraud. Sometimes it’s an attempt to keep a lender at bay by appearing to have more assets than really exist.

I’ve seen companies with big inventories that simply didn’t exist.

Not enough physical checking goes on these days, and it’s a good idea to pay the stock control guys well.

B&Qs online stock levels have been crap for years, only a 15 minute drive for me but id still rather phone and ask them to check these days after a few “click and collect” attempts over the years.