I'm wondering if I'm the only one that gets aggravated at these businesses that won't respond to email.
Many R/C businesses that sell airplanes and stuff have these fancy websites for online ordering.Why are there a few that you try to communicated with and your email goes unaswered. Seems like bad business to me.
If your going to have a website,have it checked a few times a day and answer the customers questions,and orders.That's what the sites are there for.
There's been more than one but my latest attempt was from Texas R/C Modelers.I wrote them three different times and each time got no reponse. I ask about it in some ng group and was told to call them that they were great people to work with. Why should I call them.That's what the site is for. Ordering.
For those who have businesses and websites:Give it a lot of attention.It's called business and communication and SALES.
If you don't take care of business close the site down or put a note in the site that reads "Phone orders only".
If I don't receive a response from a website....I go elsewhere.
There are some few businesses which adhere to the axiom that they should stick to the business they know, truly anachronistic these days.
In that, these few businesses have established a web presence solely to keep up with the competition, but don't put a lot of effort into the site, the site is an after-thought and the folks running the business concentrate on what they know best, the business.
Internet ordering is a crap shoot if you're not familiar with the specific business and don't have any references on which to build confidence.
I subscribed to a magazine of international repute. Really a good scale magazine. After placing the internet order, all I got was a plain gray screen with the words "Thank you". No confirmation, no number, no follow-up e-mail, nada.
When the charge showed up on my VISA bill a month later, I didn't recognize the vendor's name and disputed the charge - the amount wasn't anything I recognized and didn't match my manual record (a note pad).
The bank sent several forms for me to complete the disputation, and I filed them.
After a month, I got curious and wondered where my new subscription had gone astray, not correlating the disputed VISA charge to a month-old internet order. The name on the disputed charge was not something I recognized.
An e-mail to the magazine yielded nothing - no response. A week later a second e-mail yielded nothing. Two weeks later the first issue showed up, and I got an e-mail response from my first query that same day.
Turned out the disputed charge was theirs, and the vendor name was a truncated rendition of the publishing house, not the magazine name.
It's still a very reputable company, and they produce a first-class scale model magazine.
The only 'problem' is they haven't added any sort of confirmation dialog or follow-up e-mail to their order taking web site page, their e-mail response time is decidedly long, and US modelers are not likely to be making international phone calls so they can listen to Muzak.
It remains a hobby publication and doesn't have anywhere near the customer support resources most of us have come to expect.
One last thing - hobby vendors come and go, mostly because of shoddy products. If the product is a good one, it's likely they'll survive.
Don't burn that bridge just yet. Give 'em a chance to figure out that a decent web site with full order-taking and confirmation features isn't rocket science, doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and can be built by non-computer-geeks if they use the right software.
I have no intention of mastering yet another programming language, so I use Coffee Cup software to build and maintain my site, such as it is. No sales involved, but adding that function would be fairly simple were I to so choose. Give the vendor a chance to discover some software which will allow them to flesh out their site the way it needs to be done.
That is only half the story. A good many come and go when they discover that the market won't support the cost of the product or isn't large enough to gain any economy of scale to lower the production and distribution costs. Also a lot of the companies that advertise are part time operations. Unfortunately the web site for a part timer or a fortune 500 company can look prett much the same.
I share the same feelings however I try to take into account the type of business. With a site like this I usually send the e-mail and follow up with a phone call. If you look the web site over you can usually get an idea as to how big a business your dealing with. Mom and Pop Or the guy's with the big desk a window with a view and an earned boy. If you think not receiving a return e-mail from these folks is bad form try to communicate with someone like norton or mcaffe. Believe me for these you want to grab a phone and have plenty of crayon's and paper so you can explain things to them in a way they'll understand.
Give these folks a call and give yourself a break they probably are great folks to work with.
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