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Its unfortunately way common with smaller ecommerce websites.
Their backend inventory program may update monthly which changes the stock status.
I have some experiance with the mgmt atitude of these clients and most of them operate on a very small margin and dont invest in a DB system that updates in an "accurate" manner. One of my clients is essentially an online army navy store and with hundreds of thousands of SKU's it takes a good bit of processing power to get to that level. And that equals expensive systems which they dont want to spend money on. If they have to send an email to the customer, thats a small price to pay.
Example, Stoneedge is a typical backend software, but doesnt do inventory. Quickbooks does, but the channel isnt automatic, its a manual run. Meaning they have to dismount the database and run a manual update. That could take 3-4 hrs, and during that time their site is down. Cost about 10k in software up front, 2k annually.
The next level is about 50k In software annually and requires beefy servers/shared storage database systems which can start at around 35k on the entry level / decent performance side. For a company that has about 5-10 people, thats a lot of capital.
I dont think its good business either, but when i run across these types of smaller sites i'll usually email and confirm before i place an order just to be sure. If they dont have the money to pay for an inventory system they likely are deficent in protecting my financial info (unless they outsource it to Volusion or another shopping cart processing company)
Their backend inventory program may update monthly which changes the stock status.
I have some experiance with the mgmt atitude of these clients and most of them operate on a very small margin and dont invest in a DB system that updates in an "accurate" manner. One of my clients is essentially an online army navy store and with hundreds of thousands of SKU's it takes a good bit of processing power to get to that level. And that equals expensive systems which they dont want to spend money on. If they have to send an email to the customer, thats a small price to pay.
Example, Stoneedge is a typical backend software, but doesnt do inventory. Quickbooks does, but the channel isnt automatic, its a manual run. Meaning they have to dismount the database and run a manual update. That could take 3-4 hrs, and during that time their site is down. Cost about 10k in software up front, 2k annually.
The next level is about 50k In software annually and requires beefy servers/shared storage database systems which can start at around 35k on the entry level / decent performance side. For a company that has about 5-10 people, thats a lot of capital.
I dont think its good business either, but when i run across these types of smaller sites i'll usually email and confirm before i place an order just to be sure. If they dont have the money to pay for an inventory system they likely are deficent in protecting my financial info (unless they outsource it to Volusion or another shopping cart processing company)
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