It's quite common (from reader's complaints) for a new car bult to order to arrive with bits missing, either from the 'standard' spec or from the list of options the customer ordered. The reason is that, however efficient the production process is, sometimes bits don't arrive 'just in time' and the production line cannot be held up, so the car is built without them. The customer then gets the option of taking the car as it arrives (at a discount) or waiting for another car to be built.

HJ

I didn't realise that British Leyland was still in production!

Seriously, it's ridiculous that it still happens at all and it's a criminal use of IT software which has been designed to avoid this sort of thing and has been in commonplace usage since the 1970's.

Whether it's common I don't know - it's certainly never happened on any of my new cars since 1980.

It's quite common (from reader's complaints) for a new car bult to order to arrive with bits missing, either from the 'standard' spec or from the list of options the customer ordered. The reason is that, however efficient the production process is, sometimes bits don't arrive 'just in time' and the production line cannot be held up, so the car is built without them. The customer then gets the option of taking the car as it arrives (at a discount) or waiting for another car to be built.

HJ

Alas I've experienced this twice in recent years. The Honda dealer had the good grace to tell me beforehand and we managed to sort it out but it took a couple of months before I had the car I ordered. The root cause was good old fashioned incompetance, the wrong boxes ticked when transcribing the order.

Toyota's dealer tried to cover up the fact that my wife's Yaris had arrived without several paid for features and we ended up in acrimony and litigation. We never found out the root cause as all we got was obfuscation, lies and deceit from various members of the franchise. It was a horrible, unreliable car to boot, that just rubbed salt in.

Very little to do with IT systems, everything to do with the way you run a business. It is there to support the business not dictate how you run it or how you treat your customers, "it's the computer...." and its variants are just lame excuses for poor business practice.