Chainsawbars now moved to fulfilment

[Stere]

Is this abit  like  ebay dropshipping?

 

Suppliers>wharehouse>online shop front (now outsourcing the warehouse part & delivery part)?

 

Less vertical integration?

 

 

[Rob D]

Yep I share your pain there - in fact I likely more than share it! You think couriers are bad - but they are far worse than bad. And even though we are say a customer of someone like FedEx for 16 years - we don't have a relationship with them - we are not able to commiunicate effectively if things go wrong - it has got worse and worse.

 

I think it's fine for a customer to liase direct with a courier if it's say DPD who are well ahead of the rest and the systems that are in place are effective for a customer to sort issues out direct with them.

 

Also to note on the other side of this [and not saying this is you] customers generally have been 'groomed' not to pay for postage by Amazon and ebay. We don't do free postage for any other reason than if we don't do it it causes so many issues and admin. It would be far better if all customers paid for postage and said service was then good and consistent with good backup if problems occured.

 

When we charged more for shipping - no matter what we charged we had backlash - 'Mate I only wanted a sprocket and you charged £5.95+vat postage but on the label it says £2.95 so you're making money on the postage'. Or 'I ordered more than £1k worth of gear off you - why did you still charge £5.95+vat postage - it seems petty to me'. You can't win so I decided to opt out of those arguements!

 

Ref couriers - FedEx are lower than low - their drivers are good, their service is good - but they do not care about me or you or anyone. They are chasing me for invoices in March which we paid in May - keep sending them bank statements and 10 days later 'Dear Sir we have several unpaid invoices on your account - please reply with proof of payment'. Their website doesn't work - their chat service is based abroad - my account manager doesn't generally reply [and my request to change account manager e-mails are ignored].

 

UPS - another corporate shallow mean spirited company - they will return stuff back to us from export [charging both ways] after making little effort to contact the customer. Will over charge massively [and incorrectly] if given hald the chance...

 

DHL - bit better - but not much better - anyway it goes on. There are no alternatives and I could write pages of the underhand stuff about these courier companies. But who is the alternative? DPD cannot do longer than 1m for us.

 

 

 

 

[Rob D]

10 minutes ago, Stere said:

Is this abit  like  ebay dropshipping?

 

Suppliers>wharehouse>online shop front (now outsourcing the warehouse part & delivery part)?

 

Less vertical integration?

 

 

 

 

Yes pretty much - we no longer hold the physical stock [apart from Chainsaw milling parts] - it's all at a warehouse in Glasgow. We still own the stock - but they now scan it in and send it out for us [by auto syncing orders with our website]. The company is this one here

 

UK Based Eco Friendly Order Fulfilment Company — Green Fulfilment

WWW.GREENFULFILMENT.CO.UK

---

01.Being GreenGreen by name, Green by nature. Everything we do, we do with the planet

 

as they are still owned by the original founders and not run by a 'board'.

 

 

[Rob D]

But to go back to couriers - they are similar to politicians - only DPD [and I know they have their issues and faults as well] seem to actually care about customers - as we have a direct line to them and they are actual human people who will try and help.

 

ALL the others if there is an issue will make you jump through so many hoops of their own making [and this is when they have made a mistake]. Think of that when you see the Christmas ads for FedEx, DHL and UPS. A lot of the people working in these companies are great - not knocking them - but the higher ups it's hard to have anything good to say.