Thread: The bitter disappointment of Australian online businesses

Without naming names, in my decade as a corporate web developer of online stores for major brands and household names (Australian and international), I've been absolutely shocked at how the wetware systems (humans) behind the technology have operated. I've developed, quite frankly, freakin' amazing front end systems that allowed for the easy display of all products for sale, stock counts, simple contact systems, automated stage-by-stage emails and all the lovely stuff that I customer likes to see and use...but after their order was placed electronically it came down to the lowest paid guy in the warehouse to do his job properly in following through with the process to get the product shipped out.

It was incredibly frustrating to be contacted by the business complaining about customers complaining about orders when it was their own internal staff screwing up an otherwise totally streamlined process that took months to develop.

Cripes...once it took over a week of convincing one massive company to put their URL on their catalogs and TV ads. They had absolutely no idea of the power (and requirements) of an online presence.

TLDR: Companies get web sites made just to get more orders in, then fail to develop the important internal processes, and connection with the customer to make it a worthwhile venture...and it blows.

I buy OS regularly but this past week I have emailed two US companies for info and neither have replied. I usually just use the phone but they are difficult time zones for me so I guess the phone calls will have to be made.

Originally Posted by RedShirtGuy

Without naming names, in my decade as a corporate web developer of online stores for major brands and household names (Australian and international), I've been absolutely shocked at how the wetware systems (humans) behind the technology have operated. I've developed, quite frankly, freakin' amazing front end systems that allowed for the easy display of all products for sale, stock counts, simple contact systems, automated stage-by-stage emails and all the lovely stuff that I customer likes to see and use...but after their order was placed electronically it came down to the lowest paid guy in the warehouse to do his job properly in following through with the process to get the product shipped out.

It was incredibly frustrating to be contacted by the business complaining about customers complaining about orders when it was their own internal staff screwing up an otherwise totally streamlined process that took months to develop.

Cripes...once it took over a week of convincing one massive company to put their URL on their catalogs and TV ads. They had absolutely no idea of the power (and requirements) of an online presence.

TLDR: Companies get web sites made just to get more orders in, then fail to develop the important internal processes, and connection with the customer to make it a worthwhile venture...and it blows.

Or they had good internal processes and decided they were too expensive to continue to run on shore so off shored them into another time zone

Originally Posted by lesmeyer

There should be a law in this country that prohibits an item being put up for sale on a website that is not available for immediate shipment (read, in stock) unless otherwise stated. It is 2014 and a simple computer system can tell these things. Even some of our larger companies are simply a little backward when it comes to these matters. Online shopping has been around for 20 + years now. So they are simply stupid or unethical.
My tuppence worth.
Les

There is its called Australian Consumer Law http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/conten...oc=the_acl.htm

The sorts of practices described fall into the false, misleading & deceptive conduct and some may also be considered to be scams (relist on Ebay). We all need to report this sort of behaviour to the Office of Fair Trading in QLD etc http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/conten...sumers_ACL.htm so a profile of their conduct can be built to launch a sucessful prossecution.

If consumers stay silent and don't exercise their rights then nothing changes. Off shore based businesses are a little harder to deal with but it can be done.