I will say this up front. I have liked Red Arrow, and made orders years before the one last summer. And I may still make an order….. when the savings are worth the time it takes to arrive.....now that I know I can't expect them to let me know if an order will be delayed, as I expect from any mail order company to do. But I won't order any other stuff as I did before, because of the practice of not letting customers know when their orders will be delayed, and why. I can take that business to other places that do have a much better approach to informing customers (and frankly, better prices on some of the other things).
You know, it's not an issue with how modern a website is.
A rocket dealer could have Bill Gates as their webmaster. And an inventory system given to them for free by Amazon, with a prototype Amazon Inventory robot to check the actual inventory.... and still it would mean nothing if the dealer isn't going to communicate with the customer when their order will not be shipped for weeks or months.
This has NOTHING to do with how big the business is. It has EVERYTHING to do with customer service in the form of letting the customer know if their order is not going to be shipped for awhile, and why. The quality and/or capability of the website has nothing to do with that. It is at the feet of the individual running the company.
I do not see at the top of the RAH web page, a disclaimer in big red text saying "WARNING: If we do not have everything in stock, we will NOT ship your order until it all is in stock. This process could take months. If you do not like that, it is YOUR responsibility to contact us to find out more, or go take your ****ing order elsewhere, we don't care".
Now, I have been seeing people in this thread pretty much acting like a RAH spokesperson, expressing pretty much that very attitude in that last sentence.
But you know what, it's not only not right, it's not legal. But I'll get to that later.
So, HOW are the unsuspecting customers supposed to know that if not everything they ordered is in stock, their order is going to be secretly sat on for weeks/months? They usually do not find out until the damage is done, and then many of them won't order again.
And there are plenty of one-person or small family type businesses that DO keep their customers informed of things like this. Semroc was the best at it, but they are (were) not unique, many more of the small dealers do keep their customers informed of delays than the ones who do not. It is logical to assume that if you are running a business, you do not want to p*ss off customers, with an approach that continually keeps creating more p*ssed off customers, who mostly become ex-customers.
OK, before sending this, I did some searching. On the Red Arrow site, they say this about time for order delivery:
"Some model rocket engines, igniters and reloadable motors can be shipped by snail mail ground. Other rocket engines and reloads must have a Hazmat fee, but will ship faster. Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery by mail or 2 - 5 days with a hazmat fee. Rocket engines, igniters or model rocket starter sets containing model rocket engines or igniters can not be shipped outside the USA. All other items on your order will ship in the same box unless you place two seperate orders."
Nothing there about waiting many weeks, perhaps months. Nothing there about if there is a delay, they have no obligation to let you know this. But they indeed are under obligation to do that or else fill the order within the delivery times they state. And I do not mean a common sense obligation. Or a good-for-business obligation. I mean a legally binding REQUIREMENT under law!
Now, let's go to the FTC:
https://www.business.ftc.gov/docume...ide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule
Key part of it which says this:
"What is the Mail or Telephone Order Rule?
The Rule requires that when you advertise merchandise, you must have a reasonable basis for stating or implying that you can ship within a certain time. If you make no shipment statement, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days. That is why direct marketers sometimes call this the "30-day Rule."
If, after taking the customer’s order, you learn that you cannot ship within the time you stated or within 30 days, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delayed shipment. If you cannot obtain the customer’s consent to the delay -- either because it is not a situation in which you are permitted to treat the customer’s silence as consent and the customer has not expressly consented to the delay, or because the customer has expressly refused to consent -- you must, without being asked, promptly refund all the money the customer paid you for the unshipped merchandise."
So, since RAH says that orders can take 1-2 weeks, or 2-5 days with a hazmat fee, then they HAVE to abide by that 1-2 weeks or 2-5 days that they themselves have stated. Or else contact the customer as soon as they know they can't do it in the time stated. The 30 days is a default if a company does not state a delivery time.
The order I made had a HAZMAT FEE so that order should not have taken more than 5 days according to their website!
The FTC does not care if a company is run by one person or not. Or how modern their website is, or not. If you are in business doing mail order, you have to comply with the law. Period. No excuses.
It is the persistent excuses others have made, that led to looking up what the law has to say about a mail order company taking however long they wanted to to fill an order, without informing the customer. I knew that wasn't right, just beyond fairness, it didn't seem legal. And it is NOT legal.
I'll warn the excusemakers, that if you persist in the excuse-making, someone might go to the FTC about this. Already your excuse-making has caused enough attention to this problem to expose that it is not a rare thing (you have admitted your own orders have taken a long time) and now enough research into this to find out that indeed it is flatly illegal. Want to double down with more excuse-making, with a business you do not own?
- George Gassaway