Columns

Let me make my position perfectly clear: I know that making web pages is hard. It takes a great deal of effort to get beautifully crafted HTML on to my screen. I know that years, preferably decades, of experience is required. And that this isn't merely a new-millennium answer to hairdressing, even at the fully coiffured end of the scale.

Of course, any old fool can slap a few things together quickly in a web-design tool and hit the Publish button. We openly mock such things, and the word "FrontPage" is spat with the full force of utter contempt.

But creating that modern business requirement - the eShop - is something that requires expertise; the highest level of crimping, highlighting and razor cutting. It doesn't matter that you can drop in a "basket" from renowned vendors like Actinic. And credit card-processing facilities from Visa. No, it's the notoriously tricky process of getting the website wired to the stock-control system that requires heroic levels of hairspray.

Now you might have thought that a stock-control system would be something most retail businesses would have. And for the most part you'd be right, although for some companies it merely exists on paper. Or even worse, in the head of the proprietor, who knows exactly how many left-handed half-inch thread screws he has, and how long they've been on the shelf, too.

In today's modern, thrusting business, however, it's typical to hold such a thing on a computer. This lets

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you have one centralised place where all of the staff can see what is and isn't in stock. If it says you have 30 of a particular item in stock, and someone buys ten of them, then the number is automatically decreased to 20. Some people have even put in place clever rules, so that when the level reaches five, for example, the system tells them to order more. Staggering though it may seem, the most bleeding edge of solutions can actually do the repeat ordering for you. Can you imagine it? Such sophistication.

You'd think that such a radically good idea would have transferred itself over to the web. And indeed it has. I can go to websites and choose products from the stocklist. I can choose how many I want and put them into a basket. And then pay for them. But the sites I really like are the ones that confirm for me when items are in stock. So when I choose the £15 "before 9am" delivery option, I know they'll arrive... well, tomorrow morning before 9am.

Now clearly something has gone amiss, and I'm confused. Because whenever I go to visit such a shop, and notice they have 402 items in stock of the item I want, I make the totally irrational assumption that providing my three won't be a problem. I can't explain why such a stupid thought comes to me, but it's clearly my own fault. So when the products don't arrive the next morning, it's entirely right and proper that I should be tasked with phoning up the company, represented, naturally, by a call centre Somewhere Foreign.

When I ask why my package of items hasn't arrived as promised, I'm told they're out of stock and will ship - maybe - on Thursday next week. When I ask why the website told me they had 402 in stock, when I only wanted three, I'm then told that "it's the system". Clearly, such a revealing explanation is enough for most, but sometimes I press for more detail. Occasionally, I'll get told that the information is only correct for the stock level at close of business last night, where the order-processing system coughs into the data warehouse and thus into the website.