Catalog Woes

Things are getting whacky at the Call Center. In past Xmas Peak Seasons, when we run out of a product, that's it. It's gone. Nada until next year. Once in a great while, if retail has some huge stockpile, then corporate transfer some of it over to the catalog and we'll briefly have an item back in stock.

But not this year. oh, NO. Somehow, someway, someone is deciding that more things are to be transferred from the retail stores. We have been warned to start an order for every call. Never assume that what was gone yesterday and gone for the last couple of weeks will still be gone today. It's insane.

There is one item (besides those darn Xmas stockings) that we've had alot of calls for, a slumber bag. There's a boy/blue version and a girl/pink version. The pink one has been gone for quite some time now. The blue version sold out a couple of days ago.

Now, I do always have a test order screen up at all times in order to enter item numbers, especially for the No Longer Available and Permanently Out of Stock ones (NLAs and POSs). Everytime the NLA or POS comes up, it generates a report at corporate so that they know how many times an attempt to order is made. Helps them with future orders to vendors.

Anyway. I'm given the item number for the slumber bag. I've already had people earlier in the morning to called to order it. But it's gone. BOTH colors.

But LO! Suddenly it has become available!

"Ohmigosh!" I exclaim.

"WHAT?!" exclaims the woman back at me.

"We've got them!" I say, hardly believing my eyes.

"Oh, my gosh, that's wonderful. I called last night and you didn't have them then. They told me to try again later."

"We didn't have it earlier this morning!" I'm shaking my head. "Let me check inventory..." I quickly go to another window on my PC "... we've got 18 of the blue, still no pink," I tell her, "let's get this thing ordered while it's still available."

She agrees and I place the order in record time. It's for her daughter, and for once it's a customer who doesn't care that her girl isn't getting a pink thing.

I check the numbers again and it's down to 15. This is insane.