Issue with Harvey Norman Online Order - Parcel Shipped Notification Received but Item Was Never Shipped (No Tracking Number)

Cliff notes

Ordered item, couldn't get tracking number for a week, finally told that there is no tracking number because the couriers forgot to pick it up and the store somehow did not realise this even after a week of trying to get a tracking number from them. The parcel just sat there for a week and the store had no idea.

Full version

I ordered an item more than a week ago from Harvey Norman, and received an email stating that it had been shipped a week ago. When I was making the order, I requested via live chat for the store to email me a tracking number. This never happened.

I spent the last week trying to get a tracking number, and their live chat team constantly assured me that they would contact the store and email it to me. Again, this never happened.

It was only on Friday evening that I finally managed to get in touch with a manager who said he would leave a note for the manager to help me follow up on the case the next morning and get me the tracking number, as the store was currently closed.

Surprise, surprise…HN doesn't contact me the next morning, and when I get on live chat again after 10 am, they clearly had no idea that they were supposed to follow up on this case…because they had to put me on hold for 10 minutes so that a team leader could call the store and ask for the tracking number.

Except that…the store has no idea what the tracking number is…but promised to email it to me by mid day. I was further told that the team leader would check with the store to make sure that they email me the tracking number by mid day.

Of course, that never happened either, and when I got on live chat again, all I got was another confused agent who had no idea what was going on but promised to leave messages for the people on duty the next morning to check.

And again, the next morning, all I got was another confused agent…which meant that no messages were left for them, or nobody bothered to read them.

After half an hour with the confused agent, I got in touch with a supervisor who finally confirmed that the item was never shipped in the first place because the couriers forgot to pick it up. So for a week the store had been getting requests for a tracking number…and instead of checking for one and realising "hey, we don't have the tracking number because the item was never shipped"…the store…apparently did nothing…and the parcel just sat there…

Oh and this also means that the "your order has been shipped" email that I received was obviously fradulent. And some people think that brick and mortar stores are more trustworthy than ebay stores LOL.

And throughout this entire week, I requested multiple times to be contacted via email because the mobile phone reception here is extremely bad and I often cannot receive calls…and then HN customer service tries to contact me via phone anyway. Just…why? Sending an email is not hard? And instead of going "maybe we should send the customer an email since we cannot reach him via phone"…they don't. Somehow the idea just never occured to them.

The fact that a large company like Harvey Norman doesn't have IT systems in place to let them check for a tracking number or even figure out which courier company is in charge of an order is very, very surprising. From what I was told, each store has their own shipping practices and there are no standard process, and the main customer service team has no idea what courier company is used by a particular store because that information is not stored in their system…

I mean, okay, if this was some small home business, something like this might happen but it's inexcusable for such a large company to be so disorganized…

Little wonder that I often see people refer to Harvey Norman with names like "Hardly Normal"…