Seriously... is order fulfillment really that hard of a problem?

Last weekend I purchased 6 new bar stools from barstools.com for my newly-finished basement bar. Looks like a nice product, it got good reviews, the price was right, and shipping was free.

Of course I don't wake up early in the morning, so I wake up to the sound of the fed ex guy hitting my doorbell 5 times. Maybe I slept through the first couple of times he pushed it. Anyway, I'm bleary-eyed as I open the door and start stacking boxes in my living room. No signature needed apparently, and he just drives off.

When I actually go to look at what I received, I only received 2 of what I ordered and 4 of something totally different. The box is even a different size, which I didn't notice in my half-sleep stupor but it is actually fairly obvious.

Now really... is it that hard to fulfill an order of 6 IDENTICAL PRODUCTS? I don't really know how this stuff works, but I imagine a human being gets handed a piece of paper that says "Chad Tindel: 6 of these" and then has to go through the warehouse and get them put onto a pallet somehow. This isn't a complicated task. You just look at the part number on the piece of paper and make sure it matches the part number on the box to which you're affixing a label. I can't wait until Wal-Mart style automation is ubiquitous, because at least computers are good at comparing two numbers for equality.

At least customer service was cool about it, and said they would immediately ship out 4 more of what I originally ordered. Hooray for barstools.com. Now let's see what gets delivered.