Comment by dvtrn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvtrn | Hacker News Reader

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This has long been an issue I've had when trying to use online shopping/curbside pickup for grocery stores, and this comes even before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and pushed more of us fortunate to live in cities where online grocery buying is a thing to....well start buying groceries online.

Found myself just as baffled/apoplectic as you are: why would this be on your online storefront if you don't have the inventory for me to actually buy?

Even Amazon Prime delivery via Whole Foods has this problem, to bring it back around to the thread topic.

Interestingly it's something that small e-commerce stores are much better about, it would seem (though I don't really have any data backing that up)

Last year I tried setting up a subscription for some pet food from a mid-sized pet store chain.

The first order went through fine.

3.5 weeks later I get an email saying my next order is about to be processed, now is the last chance for cancellations, etc. I ignore it, as I want the order to be processed.

A few days later I get an email saying they're out of stock and they'll retry again later. I get these emails every day for 2 weeks, and then my order is automatically cancelled.

This happens for 2 or 3 months before I get fed up and cancel the subscription.

If I put in an order effectively a month in advance you'd think they could make sure they had enough stock for that upcoming order.

(And it wasn't a complicated order, just multiple boxes of a single SKU.)

>> why would this be on your online storefront if you don't have the inventory for me to actually buy?

Twofold:

1) They're betting that you'll still buy something once you're surrounded by merchandise. 2) This allows them to play games with shrink, imventory, and insurance.

They're betting that you'll still buy something once you're surrounded by merchandise.

Hrm. Good point, that’s exactly what’s ended up happening. Just never actively considered it

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