Burned

I like a good deal as much as the next person.  Especially, when I can get something nice for my kids.  Currently the small town we live in does not have much to offer in the area of cute and quality kids goods.  Two years ago we were wandering in the slightly bigger town South of us and I found the cutest shoes for the girls and they were cheaper than sorta cute shoes at Payless!!!  The kids wore them all summer and we loved those cute shoes.

Last week I thought I'd found another great deal on super cute Easter shoes, and bonus, my second daughter's birthday is this coming Sunday and while I couldn't get the pink shoes in her size, I could get purple which would be close enough and would go with both her Easter dress and her birthday dresses (play dress for the princess party).  I found them on a site I used to promote - www.kidsteals.com.  But I have been reminded of that crucial lesson - Buyer Beware!!!!!!!

I'm very familiar with deal-a-day sites like kidsteals.  In fact you can find me on woot.com pretty much everyday.  Not all deal-a-days are good, and they definitely aren't all the same.  Some have lost quite a bit of their quality to find cheap items to lure in suckers ... I mean customers (Tanga anyone?)  So I know what I'm doing, or at least think I do when it comes to these things, and I've gotten some pretty subpar merchandise and even dealt with a few, whoopsies.  I even suffered one completely lost order that just vanished from all records this past Christmas season, but amends were made when things were discovered and compensations offered in the form of refunds (although in the case of the missing order I was never charged) and compensations, usually discounts on current items, or future items, sometimes free shipping on a current order, that sort of thing.  Woot has even gone so far as to send complimentary items (t-shirts or small bags of crap - random items) for really bad screw ups.  Also, with the exception of the lost order, which the website database had no record of, if there is a problem all good web-admins make contact immediately!

They don't wait a week and then email.  They especially don't wait a week and email when they can't fill an order that was supposed to be expedited 1-2 day shipping. Yet, that has been my experience with kidsteals.com.  I simply thought my order was lost in the mail.  I figured it would surely be here today, sure they guaranteed before Easter, but I can forgive.  I understand shipping issues... FedEx and USPS are legendary for having spectacularly erratic tracking!  But no.  Today I got some quiet time this morning only to find an email from kidsteals saying they would be unable to fill half of my order FROM A WEEK AGO!  The one that should have been in my mailbox 3 DAYS AGO!!!!

WTF????  You couldn't immediately email me?  You couldn't let me know while I still had time to change my order, when there were still options?  You couldn't have contacted me as soon as you knew you'd screwed up?  Wow, how very responsible and mature of you, kidsteals!  You only have one product a day and you boast of your speedy shipping, but it took you A WEEK to figure out you'd oversold your product????  Wow, I'd really hate to be your accountant, do they find all your sales receipts and invoices in random shoe boxes with bits of trash and footprints on them?  You run a website, so maybe you just haven't heard of these wonderful things called databases?  They track your inventory in REAL TIME!  It's amazing, you simply query your orders against your inventory and Voila!  you know if you have enough items or if you have to start refunding, sending out gift cards and eating crow!  Oh wait, you don't offer compensation for the customers that you've wronged???  Oh well that's not very nice!  Did you know we are all parents of small children who don't understand that once they've paid for an item and it doesn't show up that it's not their fault???

You see, I did, I made a very classic blunder!  I was so excited about the cute shoes (and I wanted to make sure that she wouldn't cry when they were purple instead of pink - the pink had sold out in her size) that I told my very soon-to-be 4 year old that she was getting special shiny shoes and showed her a picture.  She got excited!  She loves pretty things and we can't buy them often.  She kept asking if her new shoes had arrived.  Now they never will.  No there is no point in keeping the blue pair I ordered for her older sister, the point being that they match for pictures in a week (yes they have coordinating dresses, one pink - one blue).

Now, I'm racing to find new pretty shoes for my kids to have by Sunday, well in a week by the latest!

Please, lets help me feel better about this devastating turn of events (from super excited to completely bummed out - with extra boos because I could have bought different shoes last week on a different deal site if I hadn't had this order pending ---- gee if they could've let me know withing 24-48 hours of THEIR mistake!!!) - PLEASE SHARE YOUR BURNED STORIES IN THE COMMENTS!