I'm going to try and explain how it works....... Manufacturers and distributors almost never give a definite ETA on anything - particularly on new releases and heavily back-ordered items.
The best we can hope for is a vague date, to which we usually add a week or two to try and avoid disappointment.
We are also given no more than a couple of days notice of how many units to expect on a shipment. Frequently we don’t know how many we are receiving until they are actually being unpacked and put onto shelves in the warehouse – and the size of one delivery is absolutely no indication of the size of a future delivery…..
As I hope is well-known, Adorama does not charge until an order actually ships. We believe that it is unfair to our customers to hold onto their money while we are awaiting a delivery, however, this means that if a customer finds a unit elsewhere he or she will most likely cancel their outstanding Adorama order. If you bear in mind that we are shipping out thousands of units every day, it really isn’t possible to forecast, for example, if a customer was the 57th person to place an order, how quickly we can ship it out!
So, where does that leave you? I can promise you that if you have placed a back-order, then the day it arrives in our New Jersey warehouse is the day it will be shipped out to you and you will receive a tracking number that same day.
In truth, the customer service staff are actually NOT permitted to give anything more than a vague ETA on back orders because of the confusion it can cause. Shipments can be delayed in the ports, adverse weather conditions can hold up road deliveries etc etc.
Added to which, until they can see on their screens in the New York office that a SKU number is showing as ‘in stock’ ie it has been booked into the warehouse, they have no way of knowing! There could be a crate of 500 units sitting in New Jersey, waiting to be unloaded and they actually wouldn’t know about it.
This short video shows the warehouse in action:
YouTube - Ben Teichberg Adorama Spokes Person
I hope this helps, but you are always welcome to contact me directly if you ever need advice or after-sales support – however, I am also completely in the dark regarding delivery dates…
..Helen@adorama.com