Here's some insight;
Nordies recently updated their inventory system online to look at all brick and mortar store's inventory as well when determining if the item was in stock. So, sometimes you'll order online and it will actually be shipped from the store. This is good, but also means that when it's out online it is pretty much out everywhere. Also, store inventory is less accurate (lots of people touching it, so it's easy for errors to occur). So when inventory is low, it's more likely to also be wrong, unfortunately )-: Also, if they have a replenishment order coming in they'll backorder it, not cancel the order. So, a cancelled order is really bad news.
Barbara, "real-time" is a relative term! There are lots of system involved in the online store supply chain (distribution centers, online store software, inventory software, etc), so all those systems have to play nice. Updating each piece takes time and is pretty complex. The Pickup In Store flag does use "real time" inventory, but it's actually an inventory number that is updated with regular frequency. Clothing and shoes is difficult because it is so size-intensive. Some shoes have over 60 sizes (length x width)!
Kari, in your case if you hadn't done buy online p/u in store (BOPUS (-:) then it probably would've gotten shipped from either the website warehouse or another store that had it. Lucky you, you got it shipped for free because your store's inventory was off.
So there you go, more than you ever wanted to know about inventory systems...LOL!
