One feature that I would have considered really useful quite a few times in my online shopping experience, but have never encountered, is the ability to buy an item with shipping deferred to a certain date.
For example, I am traveling for the next two weeks. If I ordered something to my home address it might or might not arrive while I am still here, so ideally if I see something that pushes my ‘want!’ button I’d order it for shipping on the last day of my vacation.
Or, if I see something and think ‘that would be just the thing for Y whose birthday will be in four months’ time’ I’d order if to be shipped to me at an appropriate date.
With online retailers’ sophisticated supply chain management there would be no need to hold the physical item ready for shipping, just to plan for it to be available for shipping at the specific date.
There is, of course, the common feature of bookmarking an item in one’s customer account, but that has the disadvantage (to the retailer) that the customer may forget about it, or decide to buy the product elsewhere later (e.g. when coming across it at a brick and mortar store).
Are there any notable online stores that offer such a feature?
Is there any explanation in industry publications or such why such a feature does not pay to the retailer?
Good question, what I would do is call them. No one likes to lose a sale, especially if it’s just a matter of shipping, explain you want the item NOW but will be out of town so it can’t be shipped to you. Unless the company is totally flaky they’ll want to work with you.
Some retailers, e.g. Amazon, can have frequent price changes or discontinue items. I doubt they want the responsibility of either losing revenue because someone ordered a long time ago, or pissing customers off because they didn’t apply the discount, and ordered it automatically. If you leave in object in your cart/wish list, they will tell you that the price has changed, but you can’t do anything about it AFAIK.
You can do this with video games and such when you preorder. Amazon will give you the lower price if it changes.
As easy as it may seem, it can add a significant layer of complexity to the operation. I suspect that for most retailers, the usage would be quite low. I also think that many people, if not given the delay option, will still buy – they’ll just wait on their own, or order it and hope it shows up in time. All of those things in combination make it look like it might not be worth the trouble to implement.
In just one example of the complexity, what if I have 10 of the item in stock, you order it and tell me not to ship it for two weeks, and the next day, 10 people come to the site wanting to order the same thing with no delay? Do I turn away the 10th customer, who wants it now, or do I cancel your delayed order? There are dozens or maybe hundreds of similar issues that would need to be worked out. And for what?
Amazon does let you save things in your cart for later, which can help if the problem is simply that you’re afraid you’ll forget what you wanted to order.
I believe this is known as “waiting to make the order.” This leaves the responsibility on the customer to remember when and what to order, versus the merchant having to track it and deal with a whole host of inventory concerns.
Maybe a better idea would be to ask shippers to schedule guaranteed delivery dates. Well, they kind of do already, as long as you want it tomorrow. But I mean, rather, more flexible guarantee dates. As someone who’s not home significant amounts of time, this is a shipping service I’d definitely pay for. It has the advantage of the seller shipping and billing today, and puts the warehousing and delivery dates to the shipper. If the shippers offered this, it would be relatively simple for all sellers to integrate this, rather than asking each seller to separately develop its own batch and hold strategy.
Storing inventory costs money. If you have to replace the stock you’ve sold, but can’t yet move it out of the way, that means you need more space, which means you’re paying more.
It’s not technically illegal, but it goes against most credit card company merchant agreements. Not to say stores don’t do it, but they aren’t supposed to and I’m sure large online stores like Amazon won’t. Look at the FAQ for most of these sites, and they usually say they won’t bill until the item is shipped.
My google-fu isn’t finding a good reference for this - best I can find is someone who agrees with me, which isn’t exactly proof.
In theory if I violate my merchant agreement then Visa or Discover or Amex can drop me as a customer and I won’t be able to accept credit cards. It’s pretty far from being “illegal”. For instance, if I do charge your credit card, but find that I’m stocked out for 4 days, I’m only required to notify you of the delay.
On the other hand, aside from the issue of collecting payment, revenue generally shouldn’t be recognized until after shipment.
Incidentally, we happily hold orders for traveling customers and ship on the correct date for it to arrive when desired. We don’t advertise it but will do it for anyone who contacts us about it. We only require that the customer pick one of our FedEx guaranteed options. We do charge their card right away.