I have asked about this in the past. My store told me that ever since they took over the Osco stores, they have had problems with ordering. She told me they just don't have a handle on the amounts to order yet. The employees at my store are just as frustrated about it as we are.
What I do is get rain checks. How they work it at my store is if it free after ECB, they ring it in a zero when I can redeem them. I have had to wait over a month to redeem some of them! I really don't mind if they are out when they do it this way. (Unless I really need the item soon) One store I was at had you pay for the item and then gave you the ECB amount on a gift card. The one problem with them ringing it up at zero is that you cannot use coupons, but since it is free, no big deal. Just not a $ maker then.
The one thins I wish is that they kept track of the number of rain checks they wrote out. Then they could order the right amounts for the rain checks and maybe it would take so long to be able to redeem them.