Archive for April, 2009

eBay Changes – Dispute Resolution – The Fear is upon us!

1117 days
by in eBay

OK, well I have been reading Scot Wingo’s Ultimate Guide to eBay’s Meddling Spring 2009 and I skipped straight to the negative first (very British of me) to the ‘Trust Improvements‘ section.

Now whenever eBay want to improve buyer trust, it normally means that sellers get knifed in the back and dragged through a bush like the evil lying tow rags they are (feedback changes of old..), so you can see why I have the *FEAR*.

I am assuming that you have read or plan to read the white paper….

Returns:

It is now easier to return items. In all fairness with my main cleints things are easy to return, you can change your mind up to 7 days and the item is guaranteed for 30 days.
This will increase returns, but for specific returns due to just plain fickle buying or the wrong size is subject to a 10% re-stocking fee. Buyers seem OK with this and understand your position as a seller. Faulty item returns are just dealt with, refunded or replaced as well as the buyers postage fee.

Resolutions:

The account managers at eBay can be hit and miss but most will help you sort out the issues that arise. If you are a genuine seller you really do not have to worry.
Although eBay will sooooo not want to fork out some of its own money so they might be spiteful like Paypal and put pins on your chair, but this remains to be seen and I will re-comment when I have worked with these new changes for a few months.

I probably won’t comment on the item detail changes but I am looking into the multi variant listings as this is SO the mysterious configurator that never was! Feel like I have been waiting for it for years….

What *SHOULD* you charge for support?

1117 days
by in Consultancy, eBay, Open Source, Web Mastering

There has been a bit of a hoo-hah around the new charges for support by Frooition (on top of the purchase price and monthly subscription charge) for their eBay templates and associated services. In all fairness they needed to charge for support, but I do wonder what level of support is provided for these amounts.

I quote:

EMAIL & PHONE SUPPORT:
Emergency Email & Phone Support Response Rates: £199 per hour.

What Does This Cover? Urgent critical work that requires a rapid response.
Response Time: 1 working day*

Now, that’s kinda of expensive. If you pay 3 support members £20K a year that is a little over £30 an hour. Plus *costs n profits* lets round that up to £50.
£50 per hour is normally what consultants charge. I charge £15-20 per hour, but that’s because I am new to consulting.

Next:

Standard Ad Hoc Service Support Response Rates: £99 per hour.

What Does This Cover? One-off / un-scheduled work that requires a fast response time.
Response Time: 5 working days*

Five working days is a long time to wait for something costing you £99 per hour. Five days is not fast in the e-commerce world, not in my e-commerce world anyway.

I would probably price this up at around £30 per hour as you would be able to manage the requests better and prioritise clients.

But the next bit takes the biscuit, the whole Marks and Spencer’s Belgian selection…

GENERAL SUPPORT / REPORT A PROBLEM:
If your issue is not urgent and of more of a general nature then why not log a “general” ticket.
Although we can’t guarantee to respond to these tickets, we would really appreciate any comments or suggestions you have.

Every support request is assigned a unique ticket number which you can use to track the progress and responses online.
For your reference we provide complete archives and history of all your support requests.

Which means that for two of my clients any template/store issues will not be resolved to make sure they end up paying for it. My main client is moving away from Frooition design and I am glad because I am the one who has to fix things and contact support charging my £20 per hour……

So to answer my question, what should you charge for support??

What your clients can afford and what you can sensibly justify. If you are choking on support then raise the initial price of the ‘item/service’ in order to cover the labour intensity. Hidden and add on charges that are not fully disclosed or introduced later on a whim get peoples backs up!

I feel sorry for the guys/gals who will be offering Frooition support as their clients will RAPE them for there services, and it won’t be pretty.

P.S Paying someone £199 per hour to configure/programme Parcelforce shipping zones in a php based e-commerce system is well worth the money, if only I could find someone too! Oh wait, it’s me who their paying….should…..charge…more……

What would YOU charge for support? Open comments…

Comments closed now 06/05/2009

[ChannelAdvisor Catalyst] – Julie Collings Networking Drinks Entertainment

1144 days
by in E-Business

Just a plug for the nice lady who entertained us while chatting:

iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=64923086

Website http://www.juliecollings.co.uk
Myspace http://www.myspace.com/juliecollings

[ChannelAdvisor Catalyst] – European trade, Who do you call? Intercultural Elements!

1145 days
by in eBay

Get trading in Europe and sell to those pesky Europeans who don’t speak Yahoo Babelfish language versions….

Oh yes, the amount of points lost in translation on eBay can lead to confusion, upset and well…..a negative and a refund.

Inter-cultural Elements are experts in biscuits and international translation. They don’t just translate the words, they translate your business using their European market knowledge. They even set up your channeladvisor account for that country so it takes away the pain of set up.

What they DON’T translate is your mistakes.

If you employ the services of ICE, ask for biscuits. They will know which ones you mean.

10 Reasons from their website to expand with ICE:

  1. Outsourcing specialized tasks makes business sense – we do it quickly & correctly the first time, so you sell more/sooner than by doing-it-yourself
  2. Intelligent, personal service & care from ChannelAdvisor experts
  3. We charge 1 flat price, with no commission on sales, and discounts on multiple products
  4. Start listing into new marketplaces in 2 – 6 weeks. How long would it take you to do yourself?
  5. Trump your competition by developing your own international business
  6. Quarterly sales statistics & analyses reports
  7. ChannelAdvisor flat monthly fees are equal whether you sell into 1 marketplace or 25
  8. Increase sales quickly by simply selling the same products to new buyers
  9. Use the same item translations for eBay, Amazon, Pixmania & your website
  10. Take advantage of exchange rates and sell in currencies like € and $

[ChannelAdvisor Catalyst] – Go Green with MetaPack

1145 days
by in E-Business, eBay

You wake up after CA Catalyst and it is your first day back to normality.  You get dressed then hunt around for shoes and try to find at least one pair of shoes not littered with royal mail packing labels. These are the shoes of an eBay business woman, they let me walk out the door trailing first class recorded sticker roll behind me. They know I walk past the royal mail depot, it could be dangerous.

So how could meta pack save me from being posted to the depot of lost items in the sky? By reducing the vast amount of paper waste generated by a normal royal mail/parcelforce relationship.

With metapack you get funky all purpose labels, one per parcel and you ship by service rather than by carrier. The only waste you get is your label roll backing and the sticky protector strips on your mailing bags.

The fact that they automate all of your shipping carriers, simplify your CA account shipping set up, send tracking information to you and your customer with AWOL updates and possibly reduce the amount of humans needed is by the by.

For £100 set up fee and 4% of your carriage fees you can save the planet.

For those people who really want to know more details there website is : http://www.metapack.com/

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