Building on today's celebration of zappos exemplary customer service, I wanted to see what other people have experienced with Nordstrom's handling of complex online ordering snafus. Before the gory details, I want to acknowledge that each person I talked to was, as always at Nordstrom's exceptionally polite, My concern is that politeness does not substitute for the actual solving of a problem.

"Brief" synopsis: ordered two identical items in mid-December. The items are listed as scheduled to ship in 2-3 business days. I knew there were holidays upcoming and anticipated there might be a delay. No shipping notification in 8 business days. Call, am told it is processing, should be coming. Wait about 5 business days, call again. Yes, it is in the pipeline, coming from a vendor, should be going out soon. No one offers to check it with vendor, etc. Call a couple of days later, should be coming. Check my Nordstrom's account on a Saturday morning in January; it is listed as delivered with no tracking information. Hike around my yard in case package landed in bushes instead of covered porch and call. No, it hasn't shipped. It is listed as delivered because that is the date Nordstrom expected me to have the package. (This status is not corrected on my account). Will check with vendor and get back to you. They call back, no info yet. Several days go by and I call them, asking for a supervisor. They say the best thing to do now is cancel the order. Do I want to re-order? Under what terms, I ask. It is now almost 3 weeks since order and almost 3 hours of phone time. Same terms as always. No offer to overnight the still available items. No consideration of aggravation. I ask what can be done for a customer in this situation and was told their policy was to make no adjustments ever when I attempted to clarify this.

Against a backdrop of much more responsiveness/follow through to initial problem and spontaneous courtesy offerings when what is promised is not what is delivered (see post 1 on today's blog), I now feel Nordstrom is not competitive with today's online marketplace. I shop there a lot.

Has anyone found Nordstrom willing to make any gestures towards remedying orders that totally go off the rail? I recognize outside vendors add another layer, yet feel there needs to be more accountability to the customer, who has no access to the vendor. Thanks for your feedback and patience with the details.