Well we all survived the holidays. Whew! But, before we look to the next holiday season, let me warn you, my friend. Whether shopping online or via a brick and mortar website \u2013 be wary of that \u201cOnly 1 left!\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just once that this tripped me up. So, glad to find one left, I place the order. I make payment. I\u2019m told which store has it in stock. I\u2019m on my way or I show up and only then find out that the item doesn\u2019t exist. Sure, I could come up with some creative reasons \u2013 but let\u2019s just go with the obvious \u2013 poor inventory control. Even in this day and age.<\/p>\n
Back in the early 90\u2019s I worked at Radio Shack. We took inventory once or twice a year. We hated it. It was so tedious. We had to do much of it after hours. It began by printing reams of inventory reports. Then breaking them up and each of us taking a section and counting inventory. The big ticket items were easy. It was the force feed (what we called the small parts we sold back then, that were sent automatically (forced on us) based on our inventory) that took hours to count. But, it was never accurate for very long. And it\u2019s disappointing that even now, decades later, this is still true. But, back then, it would be an empty peg. Now, it is a useless trip to a store or waiting on something that never ships \u2013 and then a refund.<\/p>\n
So, the next time you find an item where only 1 is left, be wary. The ability to pay for it before you get it is no guarantee. Not even in this age of Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well we all survived the holidays. Whew! But, before we look to the next holiday season, let me warn you, my friend. Whether shopping online or via a brick and mortar website \u2013 be wary of that \u201cOnly 1 left!\u201d It wasn\u2019t just once that this tripped me up. So, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gH3K-9G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}