wibblypig
Registered Shopper
Hi all,
I just got this on facebook and i'm not sure who amongst you uses so i've copied it here so those who don't can read. Hope that's ok...havn't posted for a while due to shall we say...unrest.
Apologies and Explanations
As a family owned jewellery business, we are totally passionate about offering not only the lowest prices for jewellery on the planet, but also pride ourselves in offering the very highest standard of service.
Right now we are deeply saddened that our service is not where it should be in the respect of us not fulfilling 100% of all customers orders. Let me explain how the majority of the problems have occurred. On the early hours of Tuesday the 6th of April we had a robbery at our main jewellery vault, where jewellery was stolen and the entire jewellery vault turned into what I can only describe as a tip! In an attempt to resume service as quickly as possible, our software team amended certain pieces of code, such that a stock take could be implemented on just the vault which was burgled. Luckily we managed to get back on air broadcasting our shows within several hours of the break-in, however the disruption to the vault meant we could not ship jewellery for several days, as we desperately tried to rebuild and check many thousands of vault locations!
To make matters worse our programmers made an error in the code, which meant that when the same item of jewellery had been stored in more than one separate vault location in the warehouse, even after the post robbery stock check, the data in our system did not reflect the true combined stock figures and as we were selling items from the second vault location it was not deleting the available stock from our records, causing us to over sell on many lines. To compound the issue, we have also uncovered that when several web bidders click on the buy button at the same time, especially at the end of auctions with limited stocks, the system is attributing stock to both orders, which of course in the real world can not happen. This issue we are still trying to resolve.
Unfortunately there has been 9.2% of orders during the period since the robbery were we have been unable to fill one or more items in a customer order. We are very sorry about this issue and every member of the family (including John Bennett who is stuck in Mumbai at the moment as he can’t get a flight home due to volcanic ash) is working hard at resolving the issue. The only lucky thing I guess, is that as we don’t charge customers credit-cards till the day the jewellery leaves our premises and as our phone numbers are all freephone numbers, nobody has been financially disadvantaged, however I fully understand how let down and disappointed many of you must feel.
Burglaries, volcanic ash and software problems, I never predicted this all happening as we handed out Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday! Since our auction launched on Sky on the 6th of January 2010 our growth has surpassed our wildest imagination and we would like to thank you all for your support through these difficult weeks and in an attempt to make sure this apology reaches everyone who has been effected by this situation, please feel free to distribute this apology letter to anyone you know is a customer of ours, post it on other websites, email to anyone, place it on Facebook etc etc.
Steve Bennett
CEO
Coloured Rocks Limited
I just got this on facebook and i'm not sure who amongst you uses so i've copied it here so those who don't can read. Hope that's ok...havn't posted for a while due to shall we say...unrest.
Apologies and Explanations
As a family owned jewellery business, we are totally passionate about offering not only the lowest prices for jewellery on the planet, but also pride ourselves in offering the very highest standard of service.
Right now we are deeply saddened that our service is not where it should be in the respect of us not fulfilling 100% of all customers orders. Let me explain how the majority of the problems have occurred. On the early hours of Tuesday the 6th of April we had a robbery at our main jewellery vault, where jewellery was stolen and the entire jewellery vault turned into what I can only describe as a tip! In an attempt to resume service as quickly as possible, our software team amended certain pieces of code, such that a stock take could be implemented on just the vault which was burgled. Luckily we managed to get back on air broadcasting our shows within several hours of the break-in, however the disruption to the vault meant we could not ship jewellery for several days, as we desperately tried to rebuild and check many thousands of vault locations!
To make matters worse our programmers made an error in the code, which meant that when the same item of jewellery had been stored in more than one separate vault location in the warehouse, even after the post robbery stock check, the data in our system did not reflect the true combined stock figures and as we were selling items from the second vault location it was not deleting the available stock from our records, causing us to over sell on many lines. To compound the issue, we have also uncovered that when several web bidders click on the buy button at the same time, especially at the end of auctions with limited stocks, the system is attributing stock to both orders, which of course in the real world can not happen. This issue we are still trying to resolve.
Unfortunately there has been 9.2% of orders during the period since the robbery were we have been unable to fill one or more items in a customer order. We are very sorry about this issue and every member of the family (including John Bennett who is stuck in Mumbai at the moment as he can’t get a flight home due to volcanic ash) is working hard at resolving the issue. The only lucky thing I guess, is that as we don’t charge customers credit-cards till the day the jewellery leaves our premises and as our phone numbers are all freephone numbers, nobody has been financially disadvantaged, however I fully understand how let down and disappointed many of you must feel.
Burglaries, volcanic ash and software problems, I never predicted this all happening as we handed out Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday! Since our auction launched on Sky on the 6th of January 2010 our growth has surpassed our wildest imagination and we would like to thank you all for your support through these difficult weeks and in an attempt to make sure this apology reaches everyone who has been effected by this situation, please feel free to distribute this apology letter to anyone you know is a customer of ours, post it on other websites, email to anyone, place it on Facebook etc etc.
Steve Bennett
CEO
Coloured Rocks Limited
