Quote:
Originally Posted by
mudmatt
I don't understand why they don't show the item out of stock when you place the order online?
|
I'm not going to defend them (TT), because I think if you have an on-line system then it should be fit for purpose.
However, and this is where it gets a bit geeky, in order to protect your systems from the outside, web stuff is normally placed in a DMZ, or hosted elswhere. The problem with this is that it becomes technically difficult (for lots, but not all) and costly to provide a secure link between the DMZ (and the outside world) and the inside systems.
Assuming this link is established (and lots do) then you have to ensure that the companies stock controll, order procesing, despatch and purchasing systems are all nicely working on the same data, you then need to provide the data in a way that the web systems can understand.
You then have to get this data into your web systems in the DMZ. There are many ways of doing this, mirrored servers, timed data transfer etc but they all have a delay factor. To allow your web systems full access to your live data is a huge risk, and also costly to do safely.
So while TT have high prices, none of the profit it seams is going into their online shopping systems. When these people have very low stock levels, or Just-in-time, it just makes the whole thing worse!
In short, check what you want on-line, then ring them to ask about stock and delivery. It's not just TT, lots of places have these issues, neither is it an excuse for bad service.