A Southern Season, Inc.

Ordered gift items not received by recipient until 40 days post-order. No communication from Southern Season. Recent two contact forms unanswered.I placed order number [redacted] on October 22, 2015 for five items. None were back-ordered according to online information. This was for a gift to arrive around the week of October 28. We did not realize until December 1, when the recipient informed us, that only one item was received by recipient on October 28, but the other four items were not received until December 1 - or nearly 40 days after the order was placed. This is obviously unacceptable and especially for a gift with no communication on this issue from Southern Season. Had the recipient not told us, there would be no way for us to have known about this delay and we were fortunate that missing items were eventually sent. The recipient could not know about the extent of the order and we should not have to ask recipient about what may have been missing from a gift. Online I see under my account that the shipment information does not make sense, but the order and invoice tabs show correct information. Importantly, two emails sent to Southern Season through their contact us web page on December 1 and December 4 requesting an explanation for this occurrence were unanswered as of December 7. I have documentation of the order, invoice, shipping information emailed from [redacted] and evidence of sending a contact request to Southern Season and will provide all upon request./////Desired SettlementI am seeking an explanation for: 1) what exactly transpired with my order fulfillment to make this gift transaction embarrassing for me by having to request information from the recipient; 2) why my two requests for information sent via Southern Season's webpage on December 1 and December 4 went unanswered; and 3) a refund for this order that did not meet a reasonable service level expectation./////Business Response We at Southern Season are disappointed by our failure to provide the level of service with this order that our customers have come to expect from us after 40 years in the wonderful gift giving business. While processing this order, the member of our team fulfilling the order mistakenly closed out the entire order after sending the one item instead of following the protocol we have in place when order fulfillment requires more than one location to ship items to complete an order. In doing so, our system showed the order as completed when in fact it was not. After discovering this error through a routine system audit, we shipped the balance of the order but it appears our customer communication system did not notify Mr. [redacted] of our error and the shipping information for the balance of the order. Unfortunately, we don't have record of receiving requests for information from Mr. [redacted] via our website but acknowledge that a customer should never have to reach out to us to ask about order status for an order that doesn't ship in a timely fashion. Instead, our service commitment is to communicate with our customers throughout the entire ordering process and provide any updates needed, especially when exceptions in fulfillment occur. We have issued a full refund for this order and reached out to Mr. [redacted] directly to discuss. Additionally, we have implemented a change in our order fulfillment system to prevent orders from being subject to manual error in this way so that this service issue does not reoccur. We are grateful to Mr. [redacted] for taking the time to provide feedback to us as feedback like this leads to exciting enhancements in our service delivery methods benefiting all of our loyal customers.Southern SeasonConsumer Response I appreciate the explanation for what happened with this order and feel somewhat better that other orders we placed over the years were not shorted as well without our knowledge. I do have a screen shot demonstrating that I had indeed communicated with A Southern Season, Inc via their online system on December 4. I produced this screenshot since I suspected I would not hear back on this matter since I had not heard back from my online request of December 1. Assuming A Southern Season, Inc did not receive two requests for information via their online system, that does not explain the failure to respond to two Revdex.com Requests for information until 26 days after that complaint was initiated. This well documented occurrence of ignored communications supports my assertion that my communications were also ignored. I can understand how the delivery issue itself can happen to any large business, but the documented failures to communicate on concerns once a complaint was formally initiated is a crux of this problem.In regard to A Southern Season Inc's offer for a refund that I received via telephone message on 1/12, we had already obtained a refund directly from our credit card issuer in December since we simply could not wait any longer for a response from A Southern Season, Inc. So this is effectively a non-resolution by A Southern Season, Inc.[redacted] Since the clock cannot be turned back on the need to communicate either at the time of the order and importantly to clearly documented communications and since we resolved the issue ourselves by contacting our credit card company directly, I am not sure if it is appropriate that A Southern Season, Inc should be given credit with having resolved this particular matter.Thank you for your time on this.Final Consumer Response