I recently signed up to purchase some items from Woolworths online (an Ozbargain deal of course), essentially to ensure I didn't miss out on the bargain being offered in stores where stock is almost always extremely limited on sale items (another issue). It turns out that their "system" involves no more than the nearest local supermarket providing the goods, so my idea that the online store has separate stock was wrong, but that's not the point of this complaint.
The issue is this. Today I received advice that they were "temporarily out of stock" and only 1 of the 3 items I ordered was subsequently delivered (no problems there, it happens and sometimes demand exceeds supply - at least temporarily). HOWEVER, when taking the order they had already debited my credit card for the full amount, and had now instigated a refund which would "take up to 3-5 business days" depending on the day of the week and bank processing times.
I believe the practice of extracting funds from a customers BEFORE checking/despatching stock is extremely poor service. I've had it happen before, but only in very rare circumstances when the seller had a genuine excuse for a delayed delivery and instead offered me a refund. In this case, while Woolworths gets no obvious financial benefit, in some circumstances their procedure of automatic deduction clearly disadvantages a purchaser. For example, accounts which pay interest on the lowest balance will be affected (could be significant depending on the purchase amount), and customers have to wait to get access to their own (refunded) money. You could argue that both of these situations would have applied anyway had the full order gone through, but that is not the point. My issue is with the practice.
When I rang Woolworths all a customer service representative could advise is "that is the system". My response is - "in modern times it shouldn't be, and in any case it's poor customer service". Not happy Woolworths!
By the way I could have filled my order in the local supermarket - I saw they had 4 or 5 of the item on the shelf the next day, but I'd already placed my order online. Live and learn.
I try to avoid the problem by allowing substitution on my online supermarket orders, if they are out-of-stock you are often better off with the replacements.