Major problems with CPC / Farnell

[nick123]

First off, I've always been a fan of CPC / Farnell, with a good product range, reasonable prices for the most part, and excellent delivery. I've got used to my company being able to place an order as late as 7pm or even after, and have our excellent UPS guy deliver the goods next day for free.

 

However of late there is something rotten in the order processing department and I feel compelled to comment, and perhaps Chris might shed some light if he reads this section.

 

A few orders back last month we placed an order, and when it didn't arrive we saw that the order had been unexpectedly cancelled. CPC claimed that there was a payment issue, but the bank confirmed that they had pre-authorised the payment, they provided the auth number, and said that the money was there for CPC to collect. We gave CPC the benefit of the doubt, paid a hefty price to get timed delivery the following Monday, and the goods eventually arrived though after the time that they should have.

 

The next few CPC orders were OK, though some with Farnell had items missing and a wrong item sent but this was corrected fine.

 

Last Friday we placed our latest CPC order, with one item the same as we had on the mysteriously cancelled order. The order should have arrived Monday, but it hadn't been processed. I expected delivery Tuesday but the order had still not been processed. We did, however, receive an email from Leonard.Baron@cpc.co.uk saying:

Unfortunately your account is being held by our accounts department, if

we are to release your recent order you must contact Accounts on

08447880000

Please do this a.s.a.p so that we can dispatch your goods.

Feeling like a criminal or something, WT... came to mind. Calling CPC they say that the email is for customers who have unpaid accounts, which is odd seeing as we don't use our credit facility and pay upfront. There was an apology for the email and a promise that the order would be processed and delivered Wednesday, which would just cause us a slight delay.

 

Wednesday we still have no goods because there are zero lines filled on the order, it's not processed and not dispatched, and we are now looking at a £100 penalty for not being able to complete some work that the goods were required for. So CPC/Farnell have totally let the side down and caused financial loss and major inconvenience for a second time in a few weeks for a loyal and long standing customer from having some rot in the order processing infrastructure and failing to resolve the issue at all.

 

I still would not totally condemn CPC/Farnell from our experiences alone of two orders that have gone bad, and the occasional issue is inevitable, but my trust in the company is none the less shattered at this point and I have to voice my extreme unhappiness and downgrade expectations considerably. Unless we can order items well in advance to have a safety margin, push more business to our other suppliers who would not be our first choice normally, but who have not let us down yet to this extent.

 

I would like to have an honest explanation for why there have now been problems now with two orders, and some assurance that it would not happen again.

 

Nick

[paulears]

What did CPC say when you called them this morning?

[nick123]

What did CPC say when you called them this morning?

 

I tried to call one of my contacts, Emma, but she was unavailable. Someone else picked up who was going to escalate, but the person they had in mind was in a meeting. So I'm waiting for a call back at the moment.

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

I did get a further explanation that the internet ordering system is not coupled with the system that sales use, and that the prices for some items on the order were different to the ones that sales had on their system. So maybe that's the root of the problem, but it isn't our fault. One of the items is the same one that we ordered some weeks ago on the mysteriously cancelled order, and the item code is still valid online today, so there seems to be an unresolved discrepancy in the CPC system for some items. CPC also say that the CVV wasn't entered for the card even though it was, and confirmed again yesterday over the telephone. It was missed on the first attempt to submit the order, which had everything else prefilled except for that, so the website reported that the CVV was missing and the order accepted after the CVV was given. Even though it was supplied and the order accepted, maybe sales see the details from the first attempt to submit. Anyway, I just hope that they can manage to get the order with us tomorrow now. We're placing quite a few orders with Farnell and CPC at the moment, and I'm trying to work on another order to place today, but am feeling anxious about it already and it's not even placed :unsure: Just hoping they can get themselves sorted out so we can enjoy using them again.

[Chris Beesley]

Thanks for highlighting this. I will look into this tomorrow for you.

 

Regards

 

Chris B.

[nick123]

Thanks for highlighting this. I will look into this tomorrow for you.

 

Thanks Chris. The goods are now out for delivery, though I had to call to get a tracking number because the website reports that the tracking number is unavailable. Normally the deliveries are sent via UPS, they show a tracking number, and will arrive at our office mid-morning; our UPS guy also drops things off at my house if no-one is in the office (great service from UPS!). I telephoned to query the tracking number and for some reason the delivery is going with citylink on a schedule to arrive any time up to 5.30pm. It's mid-day already and we could end up losing yet another day, and in the worst case because it's citylink, miss the delivery entirely because the entrance to the business centre closes at 5pm, and the citylink driver may not make the effort to drive to the alternative entrance and use the door entry system. I'm at a loss to understand why citylink has been used instead of the ultra-reliable UPS.

[Rob_Beech]

Without wishing to make you even more upset, you probably lossed that order anyway simply because city link were involved. In order to make an attempt to open gates to deliver it, they would first have to make an attempt to put it on the van to deliver it rather than just pre-write cards for the stuff that doesn't fit on the van......

 

 

I hope that by now you have your stuff from CPC, it's the stock discrepancies that really wind me up, You order something that says it is in stock, and then you get some items and a nice polite bit of A5 that says, sorry, actually when we popped and looked there weren't any or words to that effect. I can't say I don't order things for the sake of it, some items are just for stock, but generally there is a reason for most things to be ordered and if it said out of stock there's a good chance I'd order it from elsewhere so I have it on time.

 

Cancelled, missed, wrong, half full, broken orders do cost money. But the advantages of pricing, and normal stock levels of things, and the good delivery service by UPS usually outweighs this.

 

 

 

Rob

[nick123]

Without wishing to make you even more upset, you probably lossed that order anyway simply because city link were involved. In order to make an attempt to open gates to deliver it, they would first have to make an attempt to put it on the van to deliver it rather than just pre-write cards for the stuff that doesn't fit on the van......

 

:) hence my increased dismay at how this order had been handled when I thought that CPC couldn't get anything more wrong than they already had. It did arrive around 13:30, but I was concerned as we had major problems with CityLink Ashford earlier in the year to my private address when they claimed to have tried to deliver when we know that they hadn't, when cards weren't left and goods were returned to the sender before we knew that there'd been a delivery. Even their head office couldn't get through to them on the phones to find out what was going wrong. CL outsourced deliveries at one point and were in a mess, though talking with a CityLink delivery guy recently, he said that things may have improved. We still ask companies not to send goods to us by CityLink though because of past experiences.

 

I hope that by now you have your stuff from CPC, it's the stock discrepancies that really wind me up, You order something that says it is in stock, and then you get some items and a nice polite bit of A5 that says, sorry, actually when we popped and looked there weren't any or words to that effect. I can't say I don't order things for the sake of it, some items are just for stock, but generally there is a reason for most things to be ordered and if it said out of stock there's a good chance I'd order it from elsewhere so I have it on time.

 

Cancelled, missed, wrong, half full, broken orders do cost money. But the advantages of pricing, and normal stock levels of things, and the good delivery service by UPS usually outweighs this.

 

Right, and if we weren't on a deadline and if it hadn't also happened just a few orders back, then aside from the unpleasant email this mightn't have been so bad. Normally the service is fine, particularly from the Farnell side; we had some glitches recently with some items out of stock, a wrong item delivered and a shortfall from their Belgium centre, but the staff always seem helpful and they corrected this with several deliveries as soon as they could. The only upset was some expensive heat conductive silicone sealant that came with only about 5 months shelf life left when the manufacturer recommend items be sold with at least 9 months (it has 12 months from manufacture).

 

As the staff have admitted, something's wrong internally at CPC if they're seeing price discrepancies in some cases when processing orders. Glitches can happen with any company, but I think that they should investigate in their own time, and not have it happen again a few weeks later for the same item. When a customer's placed an order in good faith and paid, they should proceed to process the order as usual and not cancel it or hold it up for an indeterminate time and send out inappropriate emails, penalising the customer and making them feel bad for placing the order in the first place. This will blow over, the next order possibly today will likely go ok (though some items end in the same code as the ones that caused issues so I am wondering), and it'll get forgotten. I'm just hoping that it doesn't repeat for a 3rd time. An update from Chris to get some reassurance would be nice.

[paulears]

My favourites are actually sorts of surprises!

 

Where you order, perhaps on spec, like Rob says, and the item is unavailable and it goes on back order - then months later, one suddenly arrives - rather like Christmas, but with an invoice!

[timsabre]

Don't get me started on Farnell's bizarre split Leeds/Belgium warehousing system.

 

I recently made the mistake of including a 3V lithium coin cell on an order. The whole order was sent by a special hazardous load courier from Belgium because of the lithium content of the batteries (!!) and took 8 days to arrive, despite the batteries being also in stock in Leeds. A lot of our electronic component orders arrive in 2 separate packages, the Belgian contingent often taking an extra day. It's really annoying and surely must be costing them more.

 

I was also amused to receive a letter from RS recently saying they were moving to Parcelforce to "improve their service". Yeah, right.

[themadhippy]

Even nicer is when one item out of several is put on back order, you cancel it and get a refund,then several weeks later a surprise package turns up.

[Chris Beesley]

Hi All,

 

This is being looked into - however internally it is currently out of my hands as I personally have no direct input into the web or our ordering systems. The problem has been addressed by the management here and as soon as I have an answer I will post an update. I have been told the guys here will also be in direct contact with Nick to help resolve the issues.

 

Best regards

 

Chris B.

[matt-the-dj]

slightly ot,

my greivance is with a refund from cpc , six weeks ago I was quoted a nice price by chris for an amp( thankyou chris ) but when the order was processed it bypassed the quote and I was charged full price, I was assured at the time that my card would be refunded the difference.

 

some 4 weeks later, I was talking to my wife and it dawned on me that I never checked to see if it had been refunded, my wife had simply paid the credit card bill as she was none the wiser about the missing refund. so 2 weeks ago I rang to see why it never got refunded.

 

I have just rung them for the second time this week and its still being actioned by their accounts team. I know im not a big customer but in the space of just 2 weeks I spent over £700. Is it too much to ask that my refunds take less than 6 weeks?.

 

To their credit, the amp I bought was damaged on delivery and they did get me a replacement very quickly.

[Chris Beesley]

Gents - please feel free to drop me a line with any problems - I will try and resolve them where possible. My email addy is cbeesley@cpc.co.uk

[nick123]

Gents - please feel free to drop me a line with any problems - I will try and resolve them where possible. My email addy is cbeesley@cpc.co.uk

 

Thanks Chris. I did get a call from Amanda who explained things and confirmed that the root cause is a discrepancy between a price online and in your internal ordering system, and that when this happens you have to ask again for the CVV code on a card because, if I understood correctly, a second transaction has to be put through once the prices are confirmed or adjusted and the CVV on the original payment is not visible. She also said that CPC used CityLink on this occasion for their more real-time tracking facility than UPS, and you wanted to check that the delivery had been made.

 

If we pick any items that have a discrepancy in the future I can manage my own expectations now that I know more about the internal processing, and hopefully any delay in that case can be minimised. Thanks to CPC for helping to resolve.

[nick123]

As a final update, we placed a new order on Friday and there was the same pricing related issue a 3rd time with one of the items (a different item to before), but this time the order was shipped apart from that item, which hopefully will follow, so that's not so bad.