Is your 'In Stock' info even accurate?

jdsabin1

jdsabin1

Member
Guys,

I am getting another order from you tomorrow (the second order in the last few weeks) and right on cue, I get an e-mail from you the night before the order is to arrive letting me know that some of the so called 'In Stock' items are now, not in fact available. I assume this happens frequently as I split a few orders over the last few months with other folks as well and both times then you didn't have all the livestock I wanted either. That's four times over the last few months that this situation has occurred.

Aside from the disappointment of you not having the item (with you listing the item as 'In Stock' so I pay for the order up front) I now get an e-mail saying that you don't have 'something' (which is nearly as bad as finding out you don't have it in the first place, because now I don't even know what I am not going to get ... the problem lies in the fact that if I am buying a male and female of a species for example, I may want or need to introduce the fish together rather than separately). If you look at my order, I did place a note when I ordered online saying that if something wasn't available to please let me know up front. Quite frankly I had planned to simply cancel the order completely as I can't take addt'l time off to wait for more of the 'In Stock' items to arrive.

Speaking of, the final icing on the cake ....

You will ship the item to me when it becomes available. Sounds great but this means that when you get it you simply send an e-mail out saying the order has shipped and now I am supposed to take the entire day off and wait for the shipment to arrive. Do you guys not realize that some of us have a very hard time getting time off and especially on a moment's notice?

I am seriously tired of this happening. I love your guarantee but your ordering process, the way you handle availability, and the way you send items when you get them in stock needs to be improved.

Not to sound overly harsh but this stinks. :mad2:

-Jeff
 
Did I say anything derogatory or out of line? Just commenting on recent experiences and what I think you can improve on.

Wow. Just wow.
 
This problem happens to me as well. However, I suspect the problem is one of popularity; i.e. two customers view the web availability as IN STOCK and both order. Unfortunately if the number available is only one, one customer gets it, the other does not. I have even done this to myself when I order more than one of an item and get less than the number desired. In fairness, however, they DO offer the option of calling and saying when you can receive shipment or cancelling the item. Since I am extremely HAPPY with this vendor, I have learned to deal with this minor inconvenience. If I cannot receive, I simply cancel. And I must say that the quality of items I have received is fabulous (marine fish).
 
This happens to me a lot also, probably about 3 of 5 orders but what really burns my back side is I have checked their website daily after I have ordered, then I also get that email saying something is not available and I will get only a partial shipment. But the entire time all the items I order showed INSTOCK.

Also they say that if an item does not come back in stock in 2 weeks they will cancel the order. I have seen items back INSTOCK with in 2 weeks but I still don't receive the rest of my orders. Well, 1 out of 4 times I did

I have talked with them on the phone about this and I get the same thing about things change daily and items run out of stock....etc.

What I don't understand is why they can not seem to update their site better....

I am sure there is a better way....

All in all I am maily please with LiveAquaria but I really think they need to come up with a better system for instock items.

Talonn
 
When dealing with live animals the availability changes literally minute to minute. The order shipments depend on what we have available at our holding facility. Our holding facility does receive daily shipments from the divers, so the stock can change regularly. At this time we have not yet been able to establish a real time inventory system. We are working on this and hopefully will have one in the near future. In the mean time there are instances where we are unable to ship a fish because we are unaware of the depleted stock at the vendor. We apologize, but we are unable to give a specific date as to when we will have the specimen(s).

Again we do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can be of any additional assistance, feel free to contact our Live Aquaria Department at 1-800-334-3699 or via email at customerservice@liveaquaria.com and we will be happy to answer any question(s) you may have.

Michelle H.
Drs. Foster & Smith, Live Aquaria
 
Re: Is your 'In Stock' info even accurate?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7026243#post7026243 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jdsabin1
Speaking of, the final icing on the cake ....

You will ship the item to me when it becomes available. Sounds great but this means that when you get it you simply send an e-mail out saying the order has shipped and now I am supposed to take the entire day off and wait for the shipment to arrive. Do you guys not realize that some of us have a very hard time getting time off and especially on a moment's notice?

I am seriously tired of this happening. I love your guarantee but your ordering process, the way you handle availability, and the way you send items when you get them in stock needs to be improved.

Click to expand...

I have to emphatically agree with this point. I recently had an order where this happened. The fish that was unavailable for the original shipment was shipped to me on a bitterly cold day when we had near-blizzard conditions by afternoon. I had no idea it was even on the way until I read the email on the morning it was to arrive. I was unable to be home (not enough notice to cancel a whole day of vet appointments) and the fish traveled around on the truck all day, ending up back at the shipping agent's center at the end of the day. By then the roads were so bad, there was no way I was setting foot out in it and risking my own life. Fish died. True, I was reimbursed but that did nothing for the life of the fish that died.

You have GOT to find a better way to ship stock that isn't available at the time of the original order. The current method is unacceptable and inhumane.
 
Thank you for your post. Our aquatics team will be available to respond to posts from 9am-4pm CST Monday-Friday. For questions or concerns regarding your order, please contact us at 1-800-334-3699 (8am-10pm CST), PM us or email us at CustomerService@LiveAquaria.com. Thank you.
 
catdoc,
Thank you for your post. We have sent you a PM in regards to your order inquiry. Please contact us at your earliest convenience at 1-800-334-3699 (8am-10pm CST) or email us at CustomerService@LiveAquaria.com should you have any other questions about your order. We will be happy to assist you.
 
Next order....same issue.

On August 14 order was made and everything was available, today August 15 received shipping confirmation and like usual it said due to item availability some items did not ship.

Same story like my post above.... Right now at 6PM CST August 15 their website still shows all items that I ordered are still available.

I like LiveAquaria and I have had great luck with the items they have sent me but I REALLY think it's time LiveAquaria does work on their inventory system as this happens on every order I make now.

Please fix this issue or come up with a better system.

Talonn
 
Amazing that smaller sites, with much less money to play with, have real - time updating. You buy a piece, once paid for it gets removed...crazy technology! ;) C'mon Docs, you can do it!
 
Seems like to me that the divers den is updated in real time if I'm not mistaken. When you order and pay for a fish or coral in the WYSIWYG, that item is taken out of the system. I may be wrong about this, but I thought that's how I read it.
 
Thank you for all of your input and comments in relation to the concerns you have with availability issues within Live Aquaria. We continue to work to improve our inventory system with regards to availability and our website. We have not yet been able to establish a real-time inventory with all items but it remains a continuous goal of ours.

Our Diver’s Den items ship from our Northern Wisconsin facility. The Diver’s Den items are “what you see is what you get”, so when an item is purchased the pictures are taken off the website. For this reason we are able to monitor the inventory on these items in a more efficient manner.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. If we can be of any additional assistance, please feel free to contact our Live Aquaria Department at 1-800-334-3699 or via email at customerservice@liveaquaria.com

Suzy S
Live Aquaria
Drs. Foster and Smith
 
DFS/LA1

I can understand your issues with not being able to have a real time inventory. But what I do not seem to completely understand is the following;

I ordered on August 14th and now it is middle of the day on the 16th and still your site shows every item that I ordered as instock. I can understand that items may run out during the work day but can you at least try to do a update at the end of the day or something?
 
If I remember correctly, Divers Den items are actually owned and housed by Live Aquaria. Other items are purchased from a wholesaler once an order is placed. So it might have been in stock once it was ordered, but someone from an LFS or something may have bought the item before Live Aquaria had a chance to get it for you.
 
Talonn

We are currently doing extensive research regarding the inventory issue that was brought to our attention by yourself and other posters on this forum. Due to all of your concerns our Aquatic director is working closely with our programmers to pin point the problem and determine how improvements can be made in this area. Would it be possible for you to PM the order number you are referencing to us? This would assist us in determining the exact items to which you are referring and allow us to check them with our programmer. We appreciate your patience in this matter and assure you the issue is being addressed.

Suzy S
Live Aquaria
Drs. Foster and Smith
 
I think that the fact that LiveAquaria is willing to send any missing parts of the order is a nice touch as many vendors would not do this w/o charging extra shipping. I do think that the two week time period should be removed and left to the buyer to decide. I would rather a vendor not send something sickly and be honest rather than just send anything. A real time inventory system would be nice but difficult to integrate as there may be instances where people try to complie a shopping cart of items and then narrow their selctions down after seeing the price and such. The removed items would then need to be reaccounted for which would be pretty tricky, I would imagine.
 
vijaym85,

Thank you for your post. The two-week time period for backordered items is in place for the benefit of our customers. Should healthy specimens become available during that time, we would ship them out at no additional shipping cost. This period is not given as a deadline to our suppliers; it is used to ensure orders are not left open when an item may not be available for a long period of time. If we are unable to ship a healthy specimen within the two weeks, we cancel the order. This way the aquarist is not left in limbo waiting for a specimen that may or may not arrive in a reasonable amount of time. We hope this helps clarify our reasons behind this policy.

Nate M.
Liveaquaria.com
 
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