[UPDATE: Lands’ End contacted me and went to great links to rectify the situation, so be sure to click through to the link if you decide to read this.]

I can’t stress how important computer systems are to today’s business world. Here is an example of a company who is doing it wrong and one who is doing it right.

For years I’ve used LandsEnd Business Outfitters for our OpenNMS polos. The shirts are high quality, the ordering process is simple and on the occasion that I do need help, a human picks up in three rings and solves my problem with that one call.

Then, they “upgraded their system”. Now, my orders don’t get processed, when I call I sit in queue for a half hour (thank goodness for speaker phones) and when I do get to speak to a human, they don’t have any visibility into the order process so they can’t tell me a valid status. Then they make stuff up, like “well, your order was placed a month ago so it should be shipping by the end of the week”. When the end of the week comes and goes and it doesn’t ship, I have to repeat the process.

To add insult to injury, they are offering people who place orders now free logos. The order I canceled this morning was for nearly US$3000, over US$500 of which was logo fees. If I restarted the process now it probably wouldn’t take a month and I’d save a ton of money, but if I had remained “loyal” it would cost me. Did they offer some sort of concession due to the delay? No, so I’m looking to switch companies (perhaps Brand Fuel – anyone have a suggestion?).

Contrast this with Amazon. Amazon consistently under promises and over delivers, which two day orders arriving in one, and offering one day Saturday delivery in some places.

Recently I had to place orders on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de. Not only did my US login work on those sites, all of my account information was also available. Heck, even their “Prime” shipping service worked for me in Germany. The order I placed on the German site was done totally in German, which I don’t speak, yet the process was so similar to what I experience on the US site that it took me the same amount of time to process the order.

Guess who gets to keep me as a customer?