Ethical Companies – The Blog

1 hour and 46 minutes on “hold”, disgusting see post below this one).

Steve

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I have been a customer of E”£$%^ for what seems like forever.  I first registered the domain name and a hosting package with them at least 8 years ago and have registered all of my domains there since.  I’ve even met some of the “team” at eCommerce exhibition events, and always recommend them to people.

However, today I chose to call them about a domain issue.  It’s nothing straightforward, it involves transferring DNS servers, transferring in control from another host and has a number of complications.  So rather than call sales I called technical support, as I want to make sure it’s “doable” first of all.  And can it be done ?  Buggered if I know, I’ve been on hold for an hour and 34 minutes now, and I’m sick of hearing The Beatles and Duran Duran ….

So in my anger I called the sales number (on the other phone, the landline is still churning out Duran Duran).  Guess what ?  The sales people answered in 30 seconds.  Yes 30 seconds, shame technical support can’t manage that.

Now if I don’t get a response pretty soon they will lose ALL my custom.  Over an hour and a half is NOT acceptable.

Steve

PS I will also change E”£$%^ to the actual company name pretty soon, I’m sick and tired of call centres and waiting for ever on the phone.

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It’s all gone.  Thanks to the team that took the stock.

Steve

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** Same as original post plus update – Any money raised by this sale would be spent on a car, therefore I will consider exchanging the lot for a car **

As you may recall from one of my earlier posts I am soon to be moving house. As a result of this I need to clear a lot of stuff out, as I moving to somewhere a lot smaller (intentionally, I really don’t need a 4 bedroom house now). One of the things that needs to be cleared is a large quantity of brand new DVDs. So here’s the “offer”:

Over 4800 DVDs (mixed) for sale £2850. Add a heat sealer machine, 25 laptop bags, and some PC stuff and the lot’s yours for £3000 delivered to anywhere in the United Kingdom, can deliver to anywhere on mainland Europe as well for extra. There’s a list right here:

http://www.retrowarez.com/EthicalCompaniesClearanceList-Biddulph.xls

Please note I am not “open to offers”, the price stated is the price wanted. You can contact me on 01782 874945 or 07903 627086

Steve

PS this is a personal sale, price is “as is”, no VAT to be added, receipt would of course be provided for accounts etc.

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As you may recall from one of my earlier posts I am soon to be moving house. As a result of this I need to clear a lot of stuff out, as I moving to somewhere a lot smaller (intentionally, I really don’t need a 4 bedroom house now). One of the things that needs to be cleared is a large quantity of brand new DVDs. So here’s the “offer”:

Over 4800 DVDs (mixed) for sale £2850. Add a heat sealer machine, 25 laptop bags, and some PC stuff and the lot’s yours for £3000 delivered to anywhere in the United Kingdom, can deliver to anywhere on mainland Europe as well for extra. There’s a list right here:

http://www.retrowarez.com/EthicalCompaniesClearanceList-Biddulph.xls

Please note I am not “open to offers”, the price stated is the price wanted. You can contact me on 01782 874945 or 07903 627086

Steve

PS this is a personal sale, price is “as is”, no VAT to be added, receipt would of course be provided for accounts etc.

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Outnet £1 sale: The Outnet.com website crashes.

Fashion discount site Outnet.com decided to celebrate its first birthday by holding a £1 sale of designer goods.

Hmmm.  I can see the problems without reading any more, but whatever:

The sale went live via an newsletter invitation just before 7.30am this morning. Less than half an hour after the online sale started the Outnet’s servers crashed.

Quelle surprise.

I can imagine the scene, thousands of savvy fashionistas tirelessly clicking refresh in the hope that the website would come back to life. Except, it didn’t.

More likely to be a load of disgruntled eBay sellers trying to buy stuff to resell than “savvy fashionistas” (most of whom might not be up that early, lol !)

Theoutnet.com’s website, which is luxury fashion website Net-a-porter’s little sister, came back to life after 10am. The sale is now over.

Hardly surprising, once the penny dropped that this was a BAD IDEA.

While there are sure to be some lucky (and probably very smug) shoppers who will have managed to buy something successfully before the website crashed there are some who have been left very disappointed.

Ah yes, that’ll be the “wanting something for nothing” section of the buying public (those not buying to resell on eBay that is).

The website crash has already sporned a Facebook group named, ‘The Outnet stole my Friday’, for those disappointed by the sale the complain.

For heaven’s sake, you didn’t get a dress/handbag/whatever for a quid, get over it.  Also I would like to point out the dreadful spelling and English grammar in that last section were cut and paste from the reporting website; it makes my occasional grammatical errors pale by comparison

So today’s tip ?  Don’t have “sales” like this.  It’s plain silly, and if you do get customers there’s no guarantee they will come back, you may as well just throw £10 notes out of your nearest window.  If you really must have such silly sales then at least make sure your servers (and bank balance) can cope.

Steve

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