Ok, I waited to respond to this until I could come into the shop and see exactly what was going on. As it turns out, I personally handled this order. If I remember correctly, you placed this order for a friend who is going to Nicaragua, yes?
Let's examine what happened based on our system notes. You placed the order at 3:47am EDT on the 17th. At 11:23AM you called us to add another product to the order - a machete sheath. When you called, you stated you wanted a sheath for a cold steel machete, but didn't know the model, and wanted a $5 sheath. I tried to assist you with figuring out that sheath (the cold steel machete blade shapes vary WILDLY), and in the end we settled on a general purpose Ontario Machete sheath. At 11:28 you called back to add a 4th product to the order. Both times you were told that the items you ordered were out of stock and it would take a couple weeks to come in. At 11:28 an email was sent to you with estimated backorder arrival dates. At 12:10, a second email was sent to you with revised backorder estimation dates. At 1pm or so, you called back saying that you might cancel the order because you needed the items faster than we could provide. At 4:36 on the 18th you called and cancelled your order.
You have my apologies that the site does not show stock availability, but we lack the ability to offer real time inventory in our store. At no time did we charge your card. At no time were you told the items were in stock or would be shipping that day.
I don't remember much about your call, but I seem to remember you complaining that you tried to redial our phone number for over an hour, and I seem to remember your cell phone constantly dropping calls to us. That may have been someone else. Your order presented several challenges, and I did my best to try to determine the correct product for you, even though you weren't able to provide me much information. Regardless, I certainly wasn't rude to you, though if you got that impression you have my apologies. Personally, I'm not happy that you've decided to trash my company over items not being in stock, and I don't like that you are saying it took "days" to get a backorder email when you were notified of backorder status when you called to modify your order, and sent a backorder notification email within minutes of that as well.
Regardless, I hope you found the items you were purchasing for your friend elsewhere.
No, never him!!!
so what I do now in days I contact the manufacture company directly and very politely ask about the items/s I need and when will they shipping out including the distributors that will get them first. So far this has work for me, hope it works for some one out there. Most of the times I end up putting an order directly from the company that manufactures them.