Coastal Electronics Technologies and their business practices

RaleighMatt went on a rant a few weeks ago about Coastal E Tech and trying to get them to ship one of their products to him:

http://priuschat.com/Bad-experience-with-c...ech-t29730.html

Looking further down that thread, our esteemed moderator Evan Fusco said something interesting:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Feb 19 2007, 01:57 PM) [snapback]392862[/snapback]</div>

Here's another data point:

this past Sunday, with RaleighMatt's story in mind, I went ahead and placed an order--via Coastal E Tech's web site--for a Lockpick 3.

The next day, Monday, I got an email that said:

and included a tracking number and an estimated delivery date of March 8.

Monday evening, all UPS showed was that "billing information has been transmitted to UPS".

Tuesday evening, all UPS showed was that "billing information has been transmitted to UPS".

Wednesday morning I noticed that Coastal had charged my credit card--ON SUNDAY NIGHT, immediately upon my entering the order.

And here it is Wednesday with every indication that the package had not been picked up by UPS and therefore was still sitting at Coastal.

With RaleighMatt's experience in mind, I called Coastal and mentioned what I saw and knew--and wondered if the package had been shipped out. I was concerned that maybe UPS lost it.

She explained to me that packages are generally shipped out 24 to 48 hours after order. She checked, and yes, my package was due to go out today. That's stretching it a bit, but I'll give them that the clock started sometime Monday and that Tuesday was only 24 hours after that, so getting it into UPS's hands on Wednesday could be called 48 hours.

Indeed, my package is in UPS's trusty hands, with an estimated delivery date of March 12.

It seems that the automated system they use [a] automatically charges your credit card instantly, and automatically generates the UPS information directly into the UPS system. It's then up to the folks at Coastal to take care of the physical matter of boxing, slapping on the address label, and getting it into UPS's hands.

Since I knew of RaleighMatt's experience, I wasn't bothered by any of this, not really. Oh, that they charged my card INSTANTLY came as a surprise--but this is the computer age, right?

So Coastal is small and handles things in their own way. That's OK. But I agree with RaleighMatt that if they offer "overnight" shipping, and take your money for it, they owe it to you to pack it up and get it to UPS right away--not a few days later.

And obviously it is NOT the case that they "ship promptly" and "if you got a UPS tracking number I'd be more prone to blame UPS than Coastal" as Mr. Fusco tries to indicate. This is just how Coastal does business.

That doesn't make them bad or evil. That just makes them, them--much in the same way that other small businesses are unique, like parts4vws or SmallDog Electronics.

Although, I'm glad I saw RaleighMatt's posting and knew what to expect.

 

Oh, no doubt that's exactly what happened.

But if you say "we offer overnight shipping," in general the customer doesn't take that to mean "we offer to ship your package using the shipper's overnight service, but that'll happen only after we get around to boxing it up and getting it to the shipper, which could be only once a week depending on what's going on in our lives, so you'll get it the next business day after we get around to it".

Coastal was right up front with me: they ship within 24 to 48 hours of receiving the order. Call it 72 hours after slop. I don't know if that on their web site or not.