Online Gifts Not There Yet? You're Not Alone.

The Associated Press said in this story that Toys R Us has been telling customers that they are unable to keep their promise that all orders placed by December 10th would be received by customers in time for Christmas. A report on ABCNews.com claims that this is a "universal" problem, not just with Toys R Us, but I didn't have any problem with the online merchants I used this year, none of which were Toys R Us. What about you? Did all the gifts you ordered online this year get there in time for Christmas?

Comments

"Untried business model" - not

[lance_link]

I like this line from the ABC article

"I would be absolutely amazed if there was an Internet company that did not have problems this holiday season," said industry analyst Ken Cassar of Jupiter Communications. "It's a new business model. People are just figuring out how to make it work."

After several years of net-hype and decades of retail catalogs, to say that [ahem] "e-commerce" is new... Hm, yeah, getting buyers to give you nicely formatted entries in a database for fulfilment--whoa, really radical concept. Stand back kids, it might bite..

Things aren't getting shipped on time because these companies aren't shipping them on time. And the reason they aren't shipping them on time is that their collective heads are spinning with visions of all the money to be made "on the internet" instead of the boring details of running a real-world business. Hate to break the news to you newly minted e-businesspeople, but maybe if you spent more time getting your sh*t together and less time drooling over the wealth of Solomon that flows to anyone who uses the letter "e," you wouldn't have these problems.

Personally, problems like this make me really happy. I hope to god that "consumers" decide that e-commerce is a load of hooey so the whole PR front collapses and we can god back to the Good Old Days of the net. :)

Get the e out of e-xmas and put the x back in xmas, I say.