So you buy something cool from Apple (in my case a 24″ iMac) and you’re promised that it’ll turn up in three business days.
Or maybe not?
First of all when you open the Apple online store, if you’re looking at the UK store it will say an iMac will ship in under 24-hours. Interestingly enough those in the US get a lower quality of service as their store says it ships in 1-3 days. But make any change to your iMac at all, and the delivery time shoots up to three days (to be precise the phrase is “Ships: 3 days”).
So you order your iMac and all of a sudden the expected delivery date lurches further off in time. In my case I ordered my iMac on the 11th Feb expecting it to turn up early in the next week. The first estimate of when it would turn up was the 18th (Wed) and is now the 19th (Thu); neither of which I would classify as “early in the next week” or anywhere near the 3 days specified.
Apple will quite probably (and almost certainly correctly) claim that the fine print in their ordering process clearly states that three days for adding an extra RAM DIMM, and three further days for delivery is perfectly reasonable, and that the optimistic delivery dates are what happens in the most favourable possible circumstances. And I am not claiming Apple is unique in this sort of behaviour.
But this sort of deceptive shit is what gives salescritters such an evil reputation; enough that some of us believe they could possibly be some sort of special category of subhuman. If you are not sure that you can deliver something the next business day, do not say you can even if it sounds good. You may have a “get out of jail free” card in your fineprint, but that does not stop you looking like a scumbag.
Ideally do not say anything about delivery time until you have all the information – so you know that I have ordered that funky cable that takes an extra day to get packaged. And then give a delivery estimate, and emphasise that it is an estimate.
If someone is curious enough to find out how long it will take for the iMac to be delivered before they start the ordering process they can probably be counted on to hit a button titled “Delivery Times” where you can explain in full how long it takes to deliver an iMac including all the variations.
It is sort of old-fashioned to expect anyone to keep their word without paying attention to whether they are legally obliged to, but it does give a good impression. And all it takes is to avoid promising things you cannot deliver – surely it is worth that to give a good impression!