Those Grinchy catalogues

Yesterday, shortly before noon, the mail arrived, and in it a Bloomingdale’s catalog of Christmas gifts.

I took it inside, leafed through it, and found two things I liked. I dialed the number, confirmed the account, etc., and placed my first order, for an attractive pair of earrings.

“That is back-ordered until Feb. 7, or sooner,” said the service agent.

“Well, shoot,” I said. “What about this other pair,” and gave her the order number.

“That is back-ordered until Feb. 14, or sooner,” she said.

“This is a Christmas catalog, is it not?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“What about these UGG slippers,” I said, flipping the pages and finding the number, which I read.

“They are back-ordered until Feb. 7,” she said.

“I don’t need them for February, I need them for Christmas,” I said. “I guess I will go somewhere else.”

“I am sorry about that,” said the agent, and we hung up.

It’s not just Bloomingdale’s. Christmas catalogues arrive from many reputable retailers, all with reputations for their concern for customer satisfaction, and by the time I can get to the phone and dial it, all the stuff is not available. Maybe it is a disadvantage of living on the West Coast. The East Coasters get their catalogues three hours earlier, race to the telephone, or bring cellphones to the mailbox with them, and claim all the good stuff while my mailman is still drinking coffee in the day room.

But wouldn’t Bloomie’s want to take this into account? A valued customer is a valued customer, and more important, a sale is a sale.

Karen, my wife, is a genius of organizational analysis, and I asked her what might be the cause. She said she couldn’t say, without talking to a lot of people in the Bloomie’s system, but one fact did catch her eye.

“Both of these items were back-ordered until Feb. 7,” she said. “That is a week before Valentine’s Day.”

Her suggestion was that the customer might realize that, go ahead and order the items as Valentine’s gifts, then thrash through the catalogue looking for something – say, a sterling silver charm (for a charm bracelet) of a chili dog – that might be shippable before Dec. 25. The double sale, she thought, would be a shrewd marketing strategy.

Bloomingdale’s wouldn’t do that, though I hate to give them, or any retailer these days, the idea to think about. Whatever the reason, they didn’t do much for my Christmas spirit, and that’s not the sort of thing all us Santa Claus deputies forget easily.