Nope, the fax doesn't guarantee you'll get the bag.
When I ordered things from IR, while I was still working at the outlet, we had to fill out a form with our info, the item info (style #, color code, description, etc.), and then our cc info. It got faxed in and then we had to wait. There was no guarantee we would get our item. I believe they take the faxes in the order that they're received, and fill the orders based on that.
I know it seemed to take FOREVER when I faxed in orders, and it turned into an enormous mess. After my manager sent in my faxes for me, I waited a few days and never heard anything back. I checked my bank account and noticed that there was a pending debit for the amount of the bags I'd ordered, but a couple days later, the debits never actually went through.
I called
Coach to ask what the problem was, and they told me there was only one person who dealt with those orders. They transferred me to her but she didn't answer so I had to leave a voice mail. I asked her to call me but she never did. I called her at least 5 times over the next week or so, and she NEVER called me back. (I guess Coach's customer service isn't as good with their employees as it is with normal customers. It sucked.)
The kicker is, I spoke with a regular customer service manager about it, and she told me the faxes were never received so asked me to fax them in again. I did. What happened? They did the same pending debit, but it never went through.
In the end, it took them AGES to fulfill the orders, and when they did I ended up getting charged for double the amount of bags, because apparently they HAD received the original faxes, and even though I'd written "Second request" on the second set of faxes, they filled them as if they were another order. So I got charged double, and had to wait until I received the extra bags, then had to return them to a boutique and wait the extra time before my account was refunded.
Hopefully this nightmare won't happen to any of you because you aren't employees. Just be aware that if this kind of faxing, is anything like the faxing I had to do, it took a really long time for me to get the bags.