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Fulfillment ‘Wow’ from 1800Contacts.com

I’m always impressed by ecommerce retailers that deliver orders quicker than their “estimated” length of time. Zappos is certainly the poster child for this, and it is an important aspect of their constant effort to WOW us customers. However, I was pleasantly surprised by my latest order from 1800Contacts.com.

I’ve been ordering from them for over 8 years, and their shipping is always fast, usually within a few days. This comes in handy, because shelling out for shipping eats up any savings there are from using the site, versus ordering from my local eye doctor, and I’m usually only a few days away from running out of lenses by the time I get around to ordering. I’ve never been contact-less while waiting for an order.

This time the estimated ship date was given as 1-2 days, and the estimated shipping time as 5-7 days. So, I could expect my package in 6-9 days. I knew they would likely arrive sooner, but I was surprised to see the FedEx ground truck arrive at my house a mere 50 hours after placing the order.

These orders ship from Orem, Utah, which means that box had to have been on FedEx truck within a few hours of when I submitted the order. That’s solid fast work at the distribution center to process the order, pick, pack, and ship, but the added element that 1800 deals with, that most ecom retailers don’t have to deal with, is the phone call to my eye doctor to validate my prescription and ensure that I’ve had checkup within the last year.

All this happened in hours, and I received my contacts 2 days later, with no shipping charge. I was wow-ed.

Tags: 1800Contacts.com, Zappos