Ebuyer (was Re: [Wylug-discuss] How do you rate Virgin/NTL broadband?)

[Aaron Crane]

Andrew J Cole writes:
> eBuyer [...] eventually cancelled the order after a couple of
> weeks of non-delivery and various excuses about resupply problems
> with Toshiba.  I have never had any a bad experience with eBuyer
> previously but on this occasion either their actual stock level
> was seriously at variance with their web/order site

My understanding of the way Ebuyer work is that they rely heavily on
just-in-time deliveries from their suppliers.  The idea is that they
can reduce costs by keeping their warehouses small, so when you order
something, they don't necessarily have stock in.  But they do expect
their suppliers to deliver "soon enough".

This is why they offer discounts for increased shipping delay: it's
not that the package takes any longer to get to you once they give it
to CityLink, it's just that if you're willing to wait a couple of
days, they can better predict their required stock levels for the day
they _do_ ship it.  That's also why they don't promise to deliver on
the last possible day for your shipping level: if they overestimated
demand for a product on one day, it's worth them getting the excess
stocks out of their warehouse for an order that doesn't need to be
fulfilled till the next day.

That suggests that, with Ebuyer, you have best results with things
that they buy in very large quantities (so they're likely to be able
to fulfill on time).  Also for things that aren't likely to be faulty
(because their returns department seems to be sl-o-o-o-w).

> or they "gazumped" a larg number of orders to satisfy a single large
> customer

It wouldn't entirely surprise me to learn that someone at Ebuyer
decided that the ill-will cost of annoying many small customers would
be less than the lost-account cost of failing to meet a large order.
But by this stage, we're well into the realms of idle speculation.

-- 
Aaron Crane