Oversold stock, how is this possible?

[SandyG]

So recently, I sucked it up and went for a 6800XT which "had stock left" according to the website.
2 days later, I receive an email saying that it was over sold and either had to be changed to another item or refunded.

How does stock get oversold? If you got 50, you put 50 online. It doesn't make sense.

Furthermore, I was told that I could switch to another brand which wasn't displayed online which I declined as I wanted to think about it. Later calling back to take them up on that offer but was told no there wasn't any stock and only what is online is what is available.

I like overclockers and have done since I was a kid.. What is happening here? Yes, I am a little salty, both at prices (not OCs fault) and oversold stock..

 

[VIPER258]

This is not the first time this has happened with ocuk, happened to me last year when trying to get a MBA 6800XT and has happened to quite a few others. They really should know better considering this has happened multiple times now.

As they messed up, they should try and make it right by offering an alternative card as that seems only fair. And when it comes to prices, they do jack-up the price and add ocuk tax on top as they have done in the past.

 

[henson0115]

ocuk have old systems which apparently do not update as the stock is purchased, it takes some 20 odd minutes to update.
which means more can be sold than in stock again apparently

 

[VIPER258]

ocuk have old systems which apparently do not update as the stock is purchased, it takes some 20 odd minutes to update.
which means more can be sold than in stock again apparently

Hopefully their crappy systems get upgraded soon as planned. Thing is though, even if they have 100 piece of stock, they could just put 75 piece live and WHEN they over sell, they can still fulfill orders. This overselling crap is really annoying, especially in these times.

 

[henson0115]

Hopefully their crappy systems get upgraded soon as planned. Thing is though, even if they have 100 piece of stock, they could just put 75 piece live and WHEN they over sell, they can still fulfill orders. This overselling crap is really annoying, especially in these times.

hopefully, im also not sure they can limit sales at the moment either which doesn't help. they do need to spend some of that profit on modern inventory sale software though

 

[jaybee]

There was a thread on here about it where one of the staff sort of explained it a bit. Basically their IT systems are long overdue an upgrade but it has taken a while to get this done as they are bespoke systems requiring significant development to migrate to a new platform or solution.
Even if they are old as in early naughties old, I still can't imagine the concept of building something that does not update stock in real time. I mean who builds a system that takes 20 minutes to update and marks that off as objective complete? I'd be sacked for producing work like that.

 

[Robi_uk]

There was a thread on here about it where one of the staff sort of explained it a bit. Basically their IT systems are long overdue an upgrade but it has taken a while to get this done as they are bespoke systems requiring significant development to migrate to a new platform or solution.
Even if they are old as in early naughties old, I still can't imagine the concept of building something that does not update stock in real time. I mean who builds a system that takes 20 minutes to update and marks that off as objective complete? I'd be sacked for producing work like that.

Maybe when they first designed the system they did not have the budget or thought about long term rise in sales etc. I mean they started off as a small shop right?

 

[jaybee]

Maybe when they first designed the system they did not have the budget or thought about long term rise in sales etc. I mean they started off as a small shop right?

But it sounds like it takes 20 minutes to update even when someone buys one single item. That is not a high demand issue, it's an always there issue through poor design. It could mean if you have stock showing as "one left" and you buy it, then I buy it 10 minutes later, the same issue could occur. I think anyway. I don't know. It's poor though for any etailer to face such issues, let alone a tech company like OCUK since it comes with a certain sense of irony.

 

[HangTime]

I imagine back then sales volumes weren't so extreme that they would sell huge quantities in 20mins, they might get the odd handful of items marginally oversold but most products could probably be restocked fairly quickly anyway.
Over the years I've seen plenty of online systems claiming to have stock but then not.

I imagine it's more of a problem with B-grade items, which will be both low stock and hard/impossible to restock.

Of course, in the 20s it does seem quite archaic not to have a proper atomic system whereby in flight transactions reserve stock and prevent overselling until the transaction either completes or times out.

 

[Robi_uk]

But it sounds like it takes 20 minutes to update even when someone buys one single item. That is not a high demand issue, it's an always there issue through poor design. It could mean if you have stock showing as "one left" and you buy it, then I buy it 10 minutes later, the same issue could occur. I think anyway. I don't know. It's poor though for any etailer to face such issues, let alone a tech company like OCUK since it comes with a certain sense of irony.

Yes that I agree on, should have been tackled once they started to sell a lot more stuff online.

However I think sometimes management do not look at the tech, they will just look at figures. If something is working they will not like to spend lots of money on upgrading it as it still "works".

 

[The_Arbiter]

I guess you weren't the only one if the spare stock got used up. You just gotta go with what you can get right now, the sad reality of GPUs as we all know. It seems no matter how much spare cash you have, someone else has more.

 

[robj20]

They also need to stop taking money before despatch.
Funny how at our work which definitely requires a more complicated system we had a Sage system up and running in about 2 months.

 

[ttaskmaster]

I mean who builds a system that takes 20 minutes to update and marks that off as objective complete? I'd be sacked for producing work like that.

Well, most courier companies' systems do not update in real time. I can have something arrive at my doorstep before their system says it's left Germany, for example.
Banks and online payment companies can also take quite a while to process transactions.

 

[jaybee]

Well, most courier companies' systems do not update in real time. I can have something arrive at my doorstep before their system says it's left Germany, for example.
Banks and online payment companies can also take quite a while to process transactions.

Yeah that's slightly different with shipping updates. We are talking live stock updates at point of sale, which need to be correct and not allow purchase if there is no stock to fulfil orders. It's the most annoying thing ever as a customer to buy something that shows as in stock when it's not. It's infuriating. This is not a GPU issue. It's an investment and prioritisation issue with businesses, and has only been highlighted recently with scalping and high demand.

 

[VIPER258]

At present they do kind of have a system in place to deal with this overselling. I remember @Gibbo saying that the voucher system worked well and that it seemed to work in real time, his words not mine. So they could just use that system if they wanted which should prevent overselling. It must take a while to refund all orders that came in so why not use that system.

 

[SandyG]

Ah, that's fair enough right.. I understand old systems need to be updated but I think fair enough, it is a system issue and not some bad practices. Not much I can do but it's worth that I remember than in the future...

 

[AiiR]

There was a thread on here about it where one of the staff sort of explained it a bit. Basically their IT systems are long overdue an upgrade but it has taken a while to get this done as they are bespoke systems requiring significant development to migrate to a new platform or solution.
Even if they are old as in early naughties old, I still can't imagine the concept of building something that does not update stock in real time. I mean who builds a system that takes 20 minutes to update and marks that off as objective complete? I'd be sacked for producing work like that.

Having worked in e-commerce, I can tell you that this is not unheard of in bespoke systems. The backends are generally horrendous, and any changes are charged in the thousands or aren't possible.

It took us months to plan our move from a bespoke system to Magento and that implementation was far from perfect.

 

[Jay85]

Having worked in e-commerce, I can tell you that this is not unheard of in bespoke systems. The backends are generally horrendous, and any changes are charged in the thousands or aren't possible.

It took us months to plan our move from a bespoke system to Magento and that implementation was far from perfect.

Same, the company i work for is in a similar situation where they updated their front end website but the backend is still way behind. The bespoke nature of it means any changes or development incurs £xxxxx and they can't even give a effective quotation as they charge per hour on working on the project. Order wise was another company that we approached and a sister company dumped nearly £60k into the software and its still not working correctly.

These things take a lot of time and a lot of manpower to perfect it, its a ton of trial and error too.

 

[signal11th]

The cynic in me would say it might be nice for a bank account to have a influx of tens or hundreds of thousand of pound for a week or two earning a small percentage of interest albeit very small these days.

 

[0h_no_not_again]

OP isn't wrong, but the tone is a bit petulant and reeks of Dunning Kruger. There are robust systems that can prevent this, however, it is non-trivial to have a lot of sales & website queries asynchronously arriving and processing them such that you don't get some errors. Keep in mind this is a distributed system, involving multiple parties.

I would bet a large sum of money not a single person in this thread could manage such a task.

In saying this, I believe there are solutions, it just takes investment of time and money. Cost vs. benefit to OCUK, probably high at the moment with ridiculous loads on the website, but usually very low.