I used to work for Quad... sending a pm to 99xjlove in a sec.
Backorder issues are always a pain. If we're told up front that a product will not be available in a timely matter, then we'll delay putting it on the website. But, there are times when we're told a product will be available in a 2 months and then get strung along. One example, we put a JK rear swingaway bumper into the system in Feb 3 months after we were told about it. first order in March, 2nd in April, then a bunch started coming in. The company wanted to dropship them all due to weight. Guy number 1 never called in after he placed the order. Guy number 2 started calling in May, we were told shipping in 2 weeks. this repeated itself through the summer into the fall with a variety of excuses for why it would be another week or 2 weeks. Guy number 2 got his bumper in November! So we were lied to for months, and the customer called the company on his own and got the same lies, so he stopped yelling at us after July or so... But we still looked like the bad guy.
As a general rule, we receive shipments within 2 weeks of when we order them, and the sales system shows when the last order was made. So you'll hear "7-10 business days for delivery" a lot, since that sounds better than 1-2 weeks. Occassionaly though, you'll have problems like I mentioned above. When I could, I would add an ETA for products that would be longer than 2 weeks that would show up for the sales guy. Then they could let the person know it would be longer. Currently, Borla hasn't shipped anything since October and I think pushed back the shipping dates back to late Feb or March. Most of the Borla products will show that in the sales screens. But, one problem with this is that our systems were designed for mail order and phone orders. It wasn't designed to interact with the website, so it doesn't show any of those details on the web. The shopping cart is all stored on the website, nothing is done on the sale system until the order is submitted. So if you ordered a Borla exhaust and your confirmation email said backordered, you might not know how long it would take unless you already knew or called in to ask. We never liked that, but it's not something anybody knows how to fix.
That said, any large company has issues. Some with training, some with general incompetence, whatever... I used to work the customer service line, and people usually knew what they wanted when they called in. If they told me to cancel a backorder, I'd cancel it and say "ok, you're all set". I usually wouldn't offer an alternative unless they asked for it, or if it was something hard to find. I really doubt that "They just said that since they didn't charge my card then they didn't owe me any explination.", but there is one guy I know who is that cocky. We used to apologize, and explain that we're waiting for the product, we don't know why it's not in yet.
This is the same no matter who you talk to with large companies, at one point Quadratec had over 20 sales guys, 10 very experienced, and the other 10 with varying experience levels and 10 in CS some who would help out in sales if it got very busy. I've had issues at 4wd and other companies on technical questions, too. Even when I've called Rancho or even the massive Omix-ada/Rugged Ridge I would know more about the products than even the tech guys the customer service people transfered me to. I got burned by Omix when I ordered an exhaust pipe for a 00-01. They listed it as being the pipe between the downpipe and cat, turned out to be just a 6" length of 2.5" pipe with a 3 bolt flange welded to it (wrong flange, too!). All of their catalogs and tech people said it was a full OE-replacement pipe.
Receiving wrong parts? Yup, it happens... When 8 guys are packaging and shipping 2000 boxes in a day, you'll see some of them get mixed up. Amazingly, it's well under 1%. They'll have 40-60 orders sitting on a cart, and since they are sorted in order of shelf location, you'll get issues with similar products being switched. Somebody gets the hat with the red logo, somebody gets the hat with the green logo. What confuses me is when somebody gets JKS disconnects instead of grab handles.
That's usually because the shipping labels get switched, though. And yeah, you'll have times when a product goes out missing parts, sometimes due to MFG packing, sometimes it gets ripped open and it falls out and it's not inspected by the guy packing 150 boxes an hour. Yes, it's not acceptable, but it happens. It's always somebody elses problem to deal with.
Ah well, I don't work there any more, just some of my thoughts as somebody who has worked for the one of the big guys. I'm having a problem with Tigerdirect right now, but I learned from my time at Quadratec to just relax and be patient. Being rude gets you knowhere, be polite and they'll work with you. The times I got some hotshot or a guy screaming at me, I instantly switched to slow mode. I took my time doing anything, mainly so I wouldn't snap at him. Left him on hold longer, entered notes on the order before coming back, instead of after hanging up, etc. A lot of tricks people can use if you're being a jerk.
I tend to be super-polite when dealing with any customer service people, even checkout clerks at the movies. Always make them feel like you need their help, not that they have to help you and I've noticed that you get a lot further. That said, sometimes you get a bad egg. I've had to call back to get a different person because for whatever reason, the guy has an attitude or just doesn't care.