Tales from the Front

Hardly Amazonian service

A friend of a Multichannel Merchant staffer placed an order with bookselling behemoth Amazon.com in December. The books she ordered were for Christmas gifts, so she was a little concerned when they didn't arrive. When she called Amazon to complain, the merchant insisted that the books were indeed delivered. The customer called her local post office, and a clerk also told her that the parcel had been delivered — and that the postman remembered dropping it off. That's nice for the postman, but the customer never got her order, so she was never able to give her gifts, and now (as of press time at least) Amazon was not offering any replacement or refund. Bah, humbug!

A not-so-enlightening rating

A Multichannel Merchant staffer recently placed an order on the Website of CSN Lighting. When shopping for solar lighting, she found that products had two five-point rating systems: one for “construction quality,” with a rating from “economical” to “premium,” and one for “shipping damage,” with a possible rating of “rarely” to “occasionally.” This type of rating could be helpful when comparing items — but the staffer noticed that all the products she viewed had a shipping-damage rating of “rarely” and a construction quality rating one point away from “premium.” There were some items that had the full “premium” rating on quality, but since every item she viewed had the same “rarely” rating for shipping damage, she didn't put much faith in the ratings overall.

Long days' journey

Two Multichannel Merchant staffers placed a joint order with the J. Jill Website on Jan. 25. We decided to track the order's progression from the apparel merchant's Tilton, NH, distribution center to our Stamford, CT, office.

• 1/26/07 9:17 p.m. Transit through the DHL sort facility in Providence, RI

• 1/29/07 11:31 p.m. Transit through the DHL sort facility in Allentown, PA

• 1/30/07 7:25 a.m. Arrived at the DHL facility in South Norwalk, CT

• 1/30/07 2:11 p.m. Arrived at the Post Office in South Norwalk, CT

• 1/31/07 11:00 a.m. Order delivered to Multichannel Merchant office in Stamford, CT

We're not sure why the package had to go through Allentown — it was halfway home when it arrived in Providence! But it did arrive on schedule, so we guess we can't complain.