First Impression of Microcenter, not the best

ksquared

I made the order online, it says the order was confirmed.  Credit card was authorized.
Several hours later, Microcenter says, "Your order #xxx has been cancelled due to product unavailability or a payment authorization issue. "
So first, a great message (/s) so people don't really know what happened, is it the payment authorization or the product unavailable?  I checked, so I know the payment was authorized, so it is apparently a real-life Seinfeld episode, Microcenter knows how to take an order, they just don't know how to fulfill an order.
So what is the point of making an order and having Microcenter confirm it?  I'm suspecting that since I checked out as a guest, my order was chosen to cancel.  I had attempted to switch it to the account I made, but Microcenter couldn't even do that.
Future orders????  Am I feeling lucky?  What is Microcenter going to do about this?  Of course, at this moment I can't find out, because nobody is there to answer the phone number you're supposed to call.  
I'd even have my faith restored if Microcenter just admits there was a problem, and I'm on a waiting list for the next shipment.

JS_MC

Hello @ksquared Welcome to the community!

I'm sorry to hear that your order was canceled, however, this was not because the order was placed as a guest. We did confirm that we received your order and started to process the request. However, the item you ordered is a very highly sought after item at the moment and is not something we typically ship. Our shipping warehouse received many orders at once and we sold out very quickly. Unfortunately, we were not able to complete your order and had to cancel it.

My apologies for any inconvenience here.

We are not able to hold or waitlist an order due to the way our system does not hold financial information for that length of time.

Again, my apologies but please let me know if there is any other question or concern that I can assist you with.

Thank you.

ksquared

"and is not something we typically ship. "  "and we sold out very quickly."
Thus the question, why did you offer shipping if you weren't planning on shipping, and the follow-up question, why did you not have the (obviously) few (if any) items that you would ship as a separately ordered item which would accurately show either in-stock or sold out.  I could have possibly picked it up, but it seems like that is another fiasco that Microcenter is involved with, requiring everybody to show up to their store and waiting untold hours just to get in during a deadly pandemic.  That's Microcenter though.
So my impression of Microcenter is accurate, very poor.
But as a bit of research that might inspire you, the Seinfeld episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM

JS_MC

We offered to ship on the item while it was available, however, our website does take some time to update typically 10-15 minutes. Thus there may be a small gap where we may receive an order for an item while it may be out of stock. Again, I'd like to apologize for this!

We have made and are continuing to make our stores a very safe shopping environment. For more information about our response and the changes that we've made to adapt to the novel coronavirus please visit our site here.

I'm sorry to hear that you feel this way but we appreciate your feedback and will use this as an opportunity to improve!

Thank you.

ksquared

We offered to ship on the item while it was available, however, our website does take some time to update typically 10-15 minutes. Thus there may be a small gap where we may receive an order for an item while it may be out of stock. 

And thus the statement, "We offered to ship on the item while it was available," is FALSE., as you yourself stated with "our website does take some time to update ..."
No problem!
I ended up getting it from B&H, at $30 CHEAPER!
So Thanks for being inept!!

TS_JosephF

Hello @ksquared
I understand and would like to apologize once more for any issues and the experience you had. I want you to know that your feedback does mean a lot to us. I will escalate this to our management team and they will look into this further.

ksquared

TS_JosephF said:

Hello @ksquared
I understand and would like to apologize once more for any issues and the experience you had.

I am going to say thank you for your response.  
Maybe MicroCenter can improve and everyone will benefit.
I will say, with 4K people dying per day, I'd want as few people as possible in the store.  Even having a drive-through pickup might be worth thinking about.  And of course, people should be able to have things shipped if they'll pay for it.  Even grocery stores are doing that because of COVID.
And if somebody has what MicroCenter states is a "confirmed order," then Microcenter should fulfill it, even if it means putting people on a waiting list.  People understand waiting, people don't like being misled even if it is a mistake.

bibulb

I'm normally somewhat blasé about the typical "we've actually only got about half of your online order" order picking issue, but combined with having to go inside a store that keeps getting abruptly shut down for deep cleaning, I gotta agree - please, please, please, start implementing curbside pickup. I want to give Micro Center my money again, but I just plain ain't going inside right now.