Attn: BikesDirect Employees...
 

Sorry to do this here, but I know that a few of you post here and I've seen this work in the past.

My roommate decided he wanted a fixed-gear bike. I showed him the BikesDirect site, and he opted for a 61cm Windsor "The Hour" which showed as "low stock". He made the order via PayPal, got the order confirmation, and the next day received a UPS confirmation and tracking number.

Unfortunately, he never received the bike. The expected date of delivery -- according to UPS -- came and went without a change from "Electronic Billing Received" on the UPS site. He's since e-mailed BikesDirect via a reply to the original order confirmation a couple of times and received no response.

I've ordered from BikesDirect three times before -- twice for me and once for a neighbor -- and have never seen anything like this. It's concerning, but definitely out of character. So... any way we can figure out what's going on? Did the bike not get shipped? Is it out of stock?

PM me for order details if you need them.

Thanks!

Did these guys respond to calls? Do they have a number?

same thing happened to me. they insisted they emailed me informing me my bike was out of stock, but I did not receive an email from them and I did not receive a refund until *I* emailed them, 2 weeks after they billed my CC. I was w/out a bike and my money for over 2 weeks. Very frustrating because I could have ordered another bike that WAS in stock during those 2 weeks, had they actually emailed me or refunded me.

Also very frustrating that I could not find a number to contact them and deal with them over the phone, and instead had to go through email (which took a span of 5 days, emailing back and forth. they are slow).

That being said, i've ordered from them w/out hassle 2 other times.

out of curiosity, what did ups say?

if you're addressing me, it was the same deal as tim's friend's situation. Showed a shipping date/arrival date, and when those dates passed it changed to "Electronic Billing Received"

Sounds like it's UPS that should be dealing with this.
Definitely very odd. They didn't leave the package at your doorstep or with the neighbor, did they? May a notification of delivery got blown away by the wind, etc. Talk with UPS.

Email Tony @ IRO, you've got just a good a chance of getting an answer.

when i ordered my windsor, i got a ups tracking email the day after as well. i was expecting the bike on the day it said on that email. however, the tracking info is just for a shipping label was that printed. the bike hasnt been shipped yet. it took about an extra week before the tracking info showed ACTUAL activity and gave me a real delivery date.

i hate their process, but they came through for me.

same thing happened to me for a 64cm. After emailing back and forth, they told me that it would ship with the pre orders on september 15th. Even though it said low stock next to it.

"Electronic Billing Received" means it has not left it's point of origin and has never been on a UPS truck. I ship bikes weekly through the UPS store down the street from my shop. If the box gets to them late in the day they process the order and it generates a tracking number that will stay as "Electronic Billing Received" until it is picked up by the driver and gets changed to "departure scan" or something to that effect. Bottom line... your bike never left bikesdirect.

This seems to be happening a lot lately. Try PM'ing Mike.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=451382

Hi

I have no idea what is going on with this as I do not work in the office
and since it is the weekend and I do not know your friends name

However, I can find out Monday
Please PM me his name or transaction info

{it could be that warehouse shipped out the last one before your friend ordered; we do run nout of these quickly -- luckily hundreds more unloading soon}

Mike

Hello, everyone. Sorry to leave this hanging for so long, but some RL schiesse happened and I couldn't get back to the site. It turns out that after I posted here, one of the BikesDirect employees responded to my roommate's e-mail and the situation is all cleared up.

Evidently, when you look at the BikesDirect order page for their Windsor and Mercier "track" bikes, "Low Stock" does not mean "we are down to low stock and almost sold out." It means "we are down to low stock of the pre-orders we will be receiving soon"; out of the shipment they've got coming in, they've only got a limited number that aren't already spoken for.

Evidently they go ahead and do all the UPS paperwork when a pre-order is taken so that when it arrives they can turn it around quicker; UPS themselves put the date on the shipment, not BikesDirect. So what we saw from UPS was generic and standard, but not specific to my buddy's bike.

When the shipment comes in on or around 9/15, they'll slap the UPS labels on it, UPS will pick it up, and it'll be delivered.

So, that's that.

Another reason to seriously consider dropping so much telepresent commerce and taking the bike-buying back to the LBS where it belongs.

For what it's worth, I ordered a frame frome BI a few months ago when they had the white ones - they thought they had a 57 in stock that came in on a return but somehow it had been misboxed and was actually a different size. I had paid before they discovered this, and my refund came within a couple of days, along with an explanation of what had happened. I consider that to be more than fair treatment but it looks like the warehouse is uber-slammed whenever these things are in stock.