Where the fuck are my Zulily maternity clothes??

[TheSwallowingHandmaiden]

It's been twelve days since I placed my order and only now have I read the small print that says it takes 10-14 days for my order to get to Zulily (where from? Saturn?) and then I can expect to wait a further 65 years until Zulily lob my parcel over to me. AIBU to think this is preposterous? The excuse for their tardiness is that this is how they keep their delivery costs down: I paid £3.99!

They once kept me waiting 6 weeks, to eventually turn around and say they couldn't fulfil the order. Haven't used them again. They're happy to take your cash up front but often can't supply what they promise.

That is because Zulily is a flash sale shopping site. It works like this:

Supplier and Zulily have a chat about available inventory, and agree on a discounted price. Zulily pay the supplier less than the usual trade price, but offer a good sized order in return, so everybody is happy.

Zulily runs the sale.

Three days later the sale ends.

Zulily puts all the products that have been ordered into a spreadsheet & sends it to the supplier as a Purchase Order.

The supplier checks it, and issues an invoice.

Zulily pays the invoice.

The supplier packs everything up and ships it in bulk to Zulily's warehouse.

Zulily checks it.

Zulily gets out all the customer orders, and picks & packs everything, and ships it.

The supplier is happy, because they sold a whole bunch of last year's stock AND got paid up front. Zulily is happy because they made a nice cut of the sale with no risk. The customer is happy because they got 20% - 60% off retail, but the DOWN side is that the customer has to wait about 2 weeks longer than usual because of all the shenanigans.

Thanks for that depressing insight. YABU, however, to infer my maternity clothes are going to be so last season when in fact all maternity clothes are uninspired Might as well seek the cheapest versions, no?

Sorry icant, I'm in a maelstrom of hormonal emotion

You should NEVER pay full price for maternity clothes. That's just one of the rules, right? What did you get? I got lots of Isabella Oliver on ebay, although I confess that I paid full price for the leggings direct from the IO site, because they're amazing and totally worth it.

I didn't mean to be depressing though - it's just nice when your niche information is occasionally relevant to the outside world!

(by which I meant - of course you are dead right buy maternity stuff on Zulily and Ebay)

Icant, your post was brilliant and just what I needed, because I couldn't understand why Zulily weren't just packing up my order right there on their vast premises and whizzing them round to my gaff by the next morning.

I have bought some ubiquitous black mat leggings for a tenner, some mat yoga pants (i don't do yoga) and a rather (upon reflection) Amish top

Is it too much to ask for a faux Vivienne Westwood Prince of Wales check pair of high-waisted maternity trousers? For under fottie quid?

Ah yes, this is also true of other flash sale sites (SecretSales, BrandAlley). What normally also happens (and why sometimes orders don't get fulfilled) is either the original stock list is inaccurate, or in the meantime the supplier has offloaded stock somewhere else so can't fulfill. Plus I expect as the original supplier isn't the one you'll get annoyed with, they're less incentivised to be quick.

If you're waiting a while I find they'll sometimes let you know progress if you drop them an email (like if the stock has been shipped from the supplier yet).

Hi this seems to be the most recent thread re Zulily, wondering how your recent experiences with them have been please

Perhaps googling a review site would be better than re-starting a year old thread?