Q Talk

[Iris in bloom]

I always want to give QVC the benefit of the doubt, but I've never encountered an online e-commerce website that is so slow to process and ship. If this were a handmade item from a specialty site I could understand, but this is a multi-million dollar company. ??

[Naturally]

It’s just a way to keep you from canceling.  

[loriqvc]

@Iris in bloom - Because of the way QVC interacts with third-party vendors in its supply chain, "In Process" is the immediate status assigned to any order so the item can be secured and marked in the system as having been claimed by a customer for purchase. Some connections throughout the supply chain and some vendors are better and quicker than others, which is why there's a discrepancy between the processing and shipping times for different brands and items.

[Bhvbum]

Here is the simple explanation: You place an order, then QVC places an order with their supplier, the supplier then ships to QVC, and then QVC ships the order to you.

So the in-process portion is the time from when the item gets to the QVC distribution center.  They turn it around and then you get notified it is shipped.

What this does is keeps QVC distribution centers inventory down, because it’s hard to guess what customers are going to order. So they tried to keep their inventory with the manufacturer.

I hope that makes sense.

[Bhvbum]

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@Naturally wrote:

It’s just a way to keep you from canceling.  

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Actually it isn’t.

In process is the time it takes for QVC to place their order with the manufacturer and the manufacturer to ship it to the QVC distribution center. Then once the item ships that’s when you are notified of the shipping date. Everything before that is what is going on with that in process.

[loriqvc]

@Bhvbum - Many of QVC's vendors ship items directly from their own sites. That is part of the reason why there are often delays, backorders, orders that are confirmed and then cancelled, and other ordering problems.

[depglass]

One would never know computers are involved.  Its more like smoke signals on a day without wind.

[Bhvbum]

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@loriqvc wrote:

@Bhvbum - Many of QVC's vendors ship items directly from their own sites. That is part of the reason why there are often delays, backorders, orders that are confirmed and then cancelled, and other ordering problem.  

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 Yes that is part of what I said.  QVC doesn’t have many things truly in stock, they have to place the order with the manufacturer/vendor.  And if they get many orders from this vendor then they may queue them up for a couple of days and then ship many items to the QVC distribution center, and then QVC ships your item to you.   Sometimes the orders can ship directly from the vendor, like TV’s.

But the delay is, QVC has to place an order with somebody else first. 

[TY]

Shipping a product directly from the vendor is called "drop shipping" and in a perfect world the customer wouldn't notice any difference in the amount of time it takes a parcel to ship to them. But drop shipping isn't perfect and can easily go wrong for the customer when the vendor and the company have poor communication with each other and the company does a poor job of managing the vendor and the customer's expectations. 

[loriqvc]

@Bhvbum - What I was trying to clarify is the fact that many items are shipped directly to the customer from the vendor without going through any QVC warehouse.