How you ask? Don't send a card or gift on time for your in-laws' birthdays. It's not really a good idea. I am really bad with birthdays to begin with...which probably started because I have something like 20 first cousins, seven pairs of aunts/uncles, and various family friends who are really more like family to me. All of which makes me very lucky, but bad at acknowledging personal events like birthdays and anniversaries. But my in-laws don't know that.
So this year... I was as bad as ever but I did manage to find a great gift for my mother-in-law and because her birthday is in February, take advantage of a great sale price. The problem? I found out today, four days *after* her birthday that Restoration Hardware just sent the gift - even though I had paid for expedited shipping and a gift box. Why? They were doing warehouse inventory. I am not happy.
While, as the nice customer service person said, they may have put a message on the order page - I did not see it. What I find problematic in the workflow is that this news didn't arrest my order flow and it still allowed me to pay for expedited shipping. I did get an order confirmation email but didn't look at it because, after all why should I? I know I just ordered something, I only keep those emails if something goes wrong. I only noticed when they send out the shipping confirmation email today. Why didn't they send an email explicitly saying that all shipping was being delayed by 4-7 business days?
Now you could argue that maybe it is my fault but I feel like Restoration Hardware was not all that obvious or transparent that they were essentially 'Closed' when I made the order. I recently walked by a Williams-Sonoma on a Monday. They were closed...because they were doing inventory. Now if physical stores don't even let me walk in, online stores should make it a little more obvious that I will not be able to actually transact business in the timeframe I want to.
Please, please, please people - I need all the help I can get!