My Supplier Said to Me: What Reject Notice?

On the second (work) day of Christmas, my supplier said to me “Hmmm… I can’t find your reject notice. Are you sure you sent it? It was an email, right?”

There really is nothing like dealing with a manual supplier to bring a cup of Christmas cheer to the workplace, is there? After learning that your supplier can only do manual b2b transactions (as highlighted in yesterday’s article), you’re now running behind on your delivery dates because they sent you something out of spec.

No big deal, right? Just take a deep breath and deal with it.

You’ll just send them a reject notice and get a new batch on the way, and hopefully your customers will be understanding.

Now, it’s been more than a few days since you emailed your supplier a reject notice and they are seemingly ignoring you. After multiple emails, you finally pick up the phone and call them. How do they respond? ‘I can’t find it. What email address did you use?’

After uttering a few words under your breath, you remind yourself that this is why you need all of your suppliers to be compliant with your eCommerce standards. Change orders and reject notices are easily lost in untraceable communications and there is no good way to know if the recipient receives the document or message.

Was that reject notice really lost, or are they trying to cover up their mistake? Without evidence, it is nearly impossible to apply charge-backs and performance standards. Even if you are EDI enabled, what do you do when the message you need to send isn’t part of a standard transaction set such as RMA and RCCA processes?

So what? Important communications must have a way to provide acknowledgment of delivery. Otherwise, you might have a very unhappy customer base, and consequently, a very unhappy manager.

How do you track non-EDI supplier communications?