Saturday, July 19, 2008

China Imports

I tried a new company (for me) in China. I bought 2 phones, and they arrived on tme without a problem. A week or so later, I bought 5 phones. They also arrived without a problem. So, a week later, I place an order for 9 phones. While paying with Western Union, the woman advises me not to send the $1400.00 to them. I asked why, and she would not say. Only that she strongly suggested I do not send the money.

So I go looking on the internet for information about the company. I did not find any complaints, warnings or anything else. I emailed the company, and asked them to comment. I also said that I wanted to change the order to only 3 phones.

I called back Western Union, and pushed the issue. She finally told me that there have been 16 complaints of fraud this year.

I thought about things that could have caused 16 complaints. Of course, nothing is said about how many hundreds or thousands of orders that may have been completed without issue. Since the money was going to be held up by the bank for 3 business days, and I was still going to be charged by Western union, I decided to keep the order going and hope for the best.

From my point of view, the first 2 orders were correct. I even made a blatant error that I discovered 5 days later. They, however, knew what I had wanted, and simply did it. The service is also quick to respond to my emails. So, I really had to conclude that as a seller, things go bad with orders, and you can't make everyone happy.

They just responded to my email about everything. Know what it said? It said that my order was being packaged up, and will be shipping out tonight. She also gave me an invoice for my new order....... what new order?!? Sure as shit, she thought I was ordering 3 more phones. She had no clue what the hell I was talking about.

My point is this, communication between USA and China is difficult at best. When you stick to easy questions using keywords for their business, they can tell you what you want to know. Once you start talking about this or that, they have no clue.

Most likely, those 16 people had a communication breakdown. Instead of resolving it, they just went and complained. However, I am just guessing by what I have seen today.

Not all are good vendors in China though, and you need to check them out before hand. I had one that swore it was Genuine Apple products they were selling. A quick Google search revealed an army of pissed of customers that now had cheap Chinese crap. There really isn't anything wrong with it, if you know that is what you are buying. It's the deceiving that is the problem.

You can stop by www.pebkac404.com for my recent entry about this communication problem. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My Websites

I have created a little spiderweb of websites that all cross link to each other. This wasn't really intentional, but it seems to work pretty well. I get people that wander around and see what I am up to.

I have a website that sells board games. It gets little traffic that my other sites drive to it. However, I also have a cell phone site that Google simply loves. I'm not quite sure what that's all about, but if you search for one of the products that I sell on there, there is a good chance google throws it up at the top of the list. This drives all kinds of traffic to my store.

Mostly, i made the site for my own needs, but since I get traffic, I modified it to accept orders from anyone. It has made a few sales. One of them landed me a whopping $3500.00 cell phone order. I made a very handsome payday from that order since he did not nickel and dime me like other customers I have. I just hope the sale follows through without incident. He said he sent a check, that I will have in 2 days. If it does not bounce, I hope to have found another good customer. It better not bouce, cause I really need that money.

I also listed a bunch of the phones on my eBay store. Maybe I can make another sale or two on there. Nothing crazy, no brand names, no auction listings. Just if someone finds it and wants it. I prefer to keep my head down and stay out of trouble over there.

After a few months of trying OLA.com I finally canceled the account. No one was even looking at my stuff. I'll save the $8.00 a month. Besides, I started reading about what sucky owners ran the place, and I lost interest.

eCrater has not done shit for me. But, it cost nothing to leave it there. Kinda funny though, how my products get double listed on Google Base. Once for my website and once for my ecrater site. Different prices. I'm competing with myself, I think.

iOffer amazingly sent me TWO sales. Be still my aching heart.

What I Am Doing Now

Funny thing, how one week everything looks like doom and gloom, the next week it's all sunshine. Last week, I was thousands in the hole, unemployment running out, no job prospects, CountryWide ARM had expired, and I was is dire straights. On Friday, my website brought in a $3500.00 order. CountryWide called and said they would modify my loan into a fixed rate. I had several more sales over the weekend. Sunday night at 10pm I was juggling 3 different customers. On Monday morning I was offered a full time that I actually (god help me) turned down. Monday afternoon I went to pick up money from a sale. Got a letter (just a notice, nothing important) from the Courthouse about the tenant I am suing. Made a few sales since then, and tomorrow I am going off to my Part Time Photography job I was lucky to get last month.

Whew. Crazy.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Online Sales

eBay has ruined any real business that used to be there. I'm afraid of listing items, and actually drawing attention to myself. Not to mention the fees. I can list 10 items, sell only 1, and break even. So how is that worth it? With the new rating system, some day I am "Lowered" and the next I am "Raised". There does not seem to be any sense of order with that thing.

I still haven't been paid by Amazon for over 2 months. They better pay up in the next few weeks. I have bills long since behind.

For my own local customers, I setup http://Portable-Fun.com as an easy checkout system. It also helps me on the phone taking orders, I can quickly enter the order in, and it gives the price with discounts and stuff. The funny thing is, it gets sent to Google Base, and that has been sending traffic to it. So I get people looking at my stuff, and I wasn't even trying. No actual online sales yet, but if anyone does come through, and place an order, I will be ready.

All in all, it's a part time thing that now makes me money without any real effort. This is more of what I planned on doing 6 months ago.

Now I am going to start looking into other products like pets or kids or something else that should bring in more revenue.

Local Sales

So, I have now been to all the local Cell Phone shops to pitch my products. One owner is never around, but I did meet with 5 other store owners. Three are selling my products, and two were interested, but not so much. Guess I will have to be more persistent with the three stragglers.

Most of the stores these days are brand name only (Sprint, ATT, TMobile) so that makes it so much harder to do this. There are some more around, but they are in scattered, opposite directions. May not be worth the trouble.
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