A few days ago, I placed an online order at Ann Taylor for these:

While I do already have a pair of tall high-heel boots, they’re a few years old and starting to show their age. Also, I’m guessing with the original price of $228, these would have been much nicer. These are dressier, too, so I would still wear both until the old ones wear out completely.

They were marked down substantially and I applied a coupon to bring the final cost to $66 after tax. Amazing deal, right?

Well, it was too good to be true. I just got an email today telling me there was an “incident” with my order. The boots were sold out before my order was fulfilled.

Boo! Isn’t online shopping inventory updated in real time? I’ve definitely had things sell out before I could place my order on a few occasions.

The note said my order was shipped without the boots. I really hope that was a mistake from a standard form-letter response, because that would mean there is an empty box in the mail for me. At least I got free shipping.

They didn’t even offer a discount when they were “apologizing for the inconvenience” of screwing up my order. This has happened once before at Piperlime.com (again with the shoes!), and they sent a coupon.

I always have coupons, but it still would have been the nice thing to do.

I have quite the order history with them!

* Well, there should be some ankle boots in the mail from a recent Ann Taylor LOFT order. That one has already shipped, and I received no “order incident” messages, so I’m assuming the boots are in the box.