Continuing saga of WOODCRAFT/JORGENSEN

Went to the WOODWORKS 2003 show in Nashville Saturday .. .. .. spoke with a lady from WOODCRAFT who offered me a catalog and a coupon good during their Grand Opening .. .. .. I half jokingly declined, saying I was still mad at WOODCRAFT for the clamp fiasco. She said if many more folks hold out because of that, their Grand Opening might well be a bankruptcy sale. Seems there were a lot of folks showing up for the sale and leaving empty handed. She said each store was allotted 40 clamps in each of 3 sizes or 120 total. There are 70+ stores in the country. That comes to 8400 clamps out in the field. If WOODCRAFT bought 15,000 clamps total, that left 6,600 clamps in stock for the midnight madness online sale. Assuming at least SOME were set aside for employees and "special;" friends, there were probably less than

6,000 available for sale online. At 12/customer, that left enough for 500 orders, or approximately 10 per state. I still think they under ordered by a tremendous margin.
Reply to
Anonymous
Loading thread data ...

Christopher asks:

I think you missed the point of those who are angry. They had CONFIRMED orders, which were then turned back, refused, etc.

Charlie Self "Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common." Satchel Paige

Reply to
Charlie Self

I just don't get the anger at Woodcraft over this. I didn't get any clamps out of the deal and I'm not angry at them at all though I sure would have liked to have grabbed a few. Where do people get the idea that Woodcraft has some obligation to have enough of a sale item in stock to supply every woodworker in America? If your local Mercedes dealer decides to mark down their cars to a level the average Joe is willing to pay and they sell out before you get there are you going to get mad at them and beat them up the way Woodcraft has been over this? 15,000 clamps @ 12 per person means 1250 people could have gotten a great deal on the clamps. We all know that many people weren't able to get in on the deal because some were buying multiple times but there are still a bunch of happy wood butchers out there now. Woodcraft didn't turn this into a "fiasco", woodworkers did. BTW, this is not directed at you in particular Bob.

-Chris

Reply to
Christopher

They should have planned the sale date better. If they checked my buying history, most large purchases are the weekend after payday. All they had to do was check their sales database, do an analysis, and schedule the sale for this weekend coming up.

Due to their short sightedness, I'm going to be clamp impaired for months to come. I take no responsibility for this as they could have done better. Ed

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

EXACTLY. In fact, if I were you I wouldn't stop whining about them until they send me a dozen clamps postage free. You might try using rubber bands until they get around to this. I can't belive they are so insensitive.

-Jack

Reply to
JackD

My understanding, as well as my own experience with the Woodcraft online sale, was that the order was never "confirmed" but said "order pending confirmation" or something like that. I woke up the next day with an email that said part of my order was sold out due to the clamps already being out of stock by the time I put those clamps in my "cart". I'm not mad at Woodcraft at all...it was clear enough to me (based on the message as well as the obvious slowness of the whole system) that it was possible my items wouldn't be available to me.

PJ

Reply to
PJ

Woodcraft employees weren't allowed to buy them (at least the ones in the retail stores). My father-in-law works in such a store, and could not buy any for himself.

The stock that they had in the store lasted until Saturday afternoon. I stopped by Friday afternoon and picked up 6 clamps for myself, and they still had a pretty good stack of them left over.

It kinda sucks that everybody who wanted them couldn't get them, but has anybody considered the possibility that Jorgensen may not have allowed Woodcraft to buy as many as they wanted? It sounds like Jorgensen made no money on the added production necessary to make all of these things, so I'd expect that they limited retailers to a certain number of clamps (to prevent them from stocking up and screwing Jorgensen out of future profitable sales).

Reply to
Me

There was a letter from the folks at Adjustable Clamp Co (maker of Jorgensen) that stated the various companies were allowed to order as many as they wanted for this special. However, they had to have their order in a while ago and couldn't order more at that price.

todd

Reply to
todd

You're kidding, right? Just forgot to add the emoticon, right?

Reply to
mttt

I think we maybe oughtta consider everyone meeting at one spot. We'll all bring torches and we'll go out and storm each and every Woodcraft in the nation. We'll burn them all to the ground. That'll teach them a lesson.

By the way, wear your old clothes. The rattier the better.

UA100

Reply to
Unisaw A100

My printed out copy clearly says "Confirmed" not pending or the like.

Reply to
James Cubby Culbertson

That may be true in some cases but certainly not all. The OP for this thread didn't mention anything about his order being confirmed by mistake. He only complained that Woodcraft didn't stock up on enough clamps so that everyone wanting some could get them.

-Chris

Reply to
Christopher

Yours wasn't the only one.

Abe

Reply to
Abe

Reply to
kenR

Perhaps they confirmed "receipt" of the order, but not necessarily that it would be shipped or that your CC has been approved. Instead of speculating, if concerned, contact Woodcraft for an explanation. They would know more that we do on the subject. Ed

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Please wait until the class I'm taking ends.

Barry

Reply to
B a r r y B u r k e J r .

Shhh ... listen carefully ... is that the gentle 'plop' of bait hitting the placid waters?

;>)

Reply to
Swingman

Maybe the web page programmers botched it and issue a confirmation by mistake. After all, how much software is actually reliable?

Getting one's shorts in a knot over this issue seems to me a waste of energy. I've missed lots of opportunities - I get over it.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Daly

Gracias! I almost bit...

Reply to
mttt

I did call Woodcraft. The morning after the sale as they sent an email saying one of the line items was cancelled (I was fortunate to have gotten two line items delivered unlike others who had their whole order cancelled). I don't see it being a CC issue as they shipped a partial order. A cc issue would have cancelled the whole order. Their explanation went something like this: We're sorry but our systems couldn't keep up with demand. Consequently, orders were placed and confirmed but the inventory had already been sold. My gripe with Woodcraft at this point has to do with them not being properly prepared to handle such a sale and their unwillingness to do the right thing after the fact. They'd do much better to simply eat the cost of filling those "confirmed" orders and retain their customer base.

I work for Intel and learned a lot from how they handled their Floating Point issue on the Pentium several years ago. That screw up cost the company $500M and lost a large number of customers. Cheers, cc

Reply to
James Cubby Culbertson

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.