Internet Inadequacies

Twice this holiday season Ethel and I have submitted orders online, and twice we've gotten back somewhat misleading order confirmations.

The first order went to RitzPix - Ethel made a very pretty calendar using pictures we had taken throughout the year. Oh, speaking of which, RitzPix people - it's nice that your calendar application gives us the ability to add our own text throughout the year, it would be nice if we could remove yours as well. Oh, and, it's "Daylight Saving Time," not "Savings" - you had it on the calendar twice, once was right, once was wrong.

But I digress. At 8pm or so, we submitted the order. An hour later, we received an email that said our order was received and is being printed and will be ready shortly. I went by Ritz at 5pm the following day to pick up our calendar and the nice man there explained to me that the email didn't mean that the calendar was printed, it just meant that the order was entered into their system (oddly enough, he also made a typing gesture as he explained, as if to say that someone else had entered the order into the system after it had been received).

He went on to explain that their calendar printer was down and therefore they could not print the calendar there, but because of inadequacies in Ritz' software, there was no way for them to tell the big Ritz in the sky that they were only able to print pictures, not calendars. He assured me that someone from their location would put our calendar on a memory stick and drive to a different location, print the calendar and then call us when it was done.

More recently, I sent a print order to FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinkos - good job with the name change, though it now seems like you're competing with Microsoft Office - do you really want to do that?). It was a one pager. The receipt said it would be ready the next day by 2pm, ok - seemed reasonable. But then came an email confirmation which said "Most jobs go into production within 15 minutes of receipt."

The Fed Ex location was on my way home later that day, so I stopped in to see if my printout was ready. The nice lady took my order confirmation and walked back to the bored-looking lady sitting at the printer who took out her highlighter and highlighted the "2pm" part of the confirmation. Collectively they explained to me that it would not be ready until tomorrow at 2pm, as the confirmation said.

So here's the thing people. Twice we placed orders, and twice we received somewhat misleading confirmations. Is it really that hard to word your confirmations correctly? Maybe something like "we received your order and will contact you when it has been printed?" Or is there some reason you want me to think that my order is being printed right away (which obviously isn't the case).