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Costco

Costco is a major retailer. They sell a very limited selection of computer books on their web site, all from Microsoft Press. Total selection is only about 30 books (as of January 2000), but the prices are great. 

December 30, 1999 

I ordered an in-stock book (one book) from the Costco web site. Ten days later, it still had not shipped.

I emailed customer service on January 9th and they responded the next day that the vendor had not shipped it. 

I emailed customer service again on January 12th. No reply.
I emailed customer service again on January 13th. No reply. 
I emailed customer service again on January 15th. No reply. 
I emailed customer service again on January 17th. No reply. 

I called them January 18th and spoke to a person who promised to look into it. He said the book was showing in his computer as being in stock. Later that day I got an email message from Costco about the order, the guts of which was:
       Item 298900 is on B/O the ETA release is 01/20.

As if to add insult to injury, this email message ended with:

Would you like to receive additional information via e-mail on upcoming programs or special events? If so, please send us your name and membership and any or all of the e-mail addresses where you would like to receive this valuable information.

A commercial.

January 19, 2000 I got another email message from Costco that probably resulted from one of the four previously ignored messages. It said:

Your order is still on back order. We will notify you as soon as we hear anything.

January 20, 2000. An email message from Costco said they shipped the book.

January 21, 2000. Another email message from Costco also said they shipped the book. This one said it was shipped on the 19th (the same day they said it was on back order above) and should arrive by January 26th. The message included a tracking number, but did not mention the name of the shipping company which makes the tracking number much less useful. All told, it took 21 days to ship a book that the computers said was in-stock. 

The book did arrive on January 26th as they said it would. 

I checked my credit card bill and discovered that Costco had billed my card on December 30, 1999, a full three weeks prior to shipping my order. 

January 27, 2000

Another package arrived from Costco today, from the online pharmacy division. In the past, I had ordered an item on two different occasions from the pharmacy section of Costco's web site with no problems. This time however, I did not order the product they sent. 

I e-mailed customer service with the details of this mystery package (order number, date of the order). Turns out that in dealing with the book snafu, they inadvertently sent me the drug item that I had previously ordered. They got my old orders mixed up. In fairness, they handled this snafu quite well.