A Dropshipping No-No
I had lunch today with a friend of mine that uses a dropship company to sell fashion handbags. Over lunch she was complaining about an irate woman who had called because it had been nearly 2 weeks since the day she placed her order and still no hand bag. I asked her if the client had paid with a check, or was her dropshipping company running behind or had the bag been lost??? Even I was taken aback at the thought of waiting 2 weeks for a bag.
My friend answered no, ” I just wait until I have 10 orders before I place my order with my dropshipping company”
What??? Why would you do that when one of the big perks of dropshipping is that you can place an order 1 item at a time??
I told her I usually wait until the end of the day to send in my orders, but I NEVER EVER leave my desk with an unfulfilled order.
I don’t know if I got thru to her, but I know one thing for sure, she lost what could have been a good customer.
When should you hold on to an order before placing it with your dropshipper? The only acceptable time I think is if the client purchases your merchandise with a check. If I get an order and they are sending in a check I will call them and see if I can get them to switch to credit card. 9 times out of 10 they do once I explain to them I can’t fulfill their order until I receive their check and then it can be another 5 business days before I know that the check has cleared. Most people don’t want to wait that long.
The reason I call is that its more personal. When I used to send them an email, many people would say that’s ok, they still preferred to send a check.
Even though most of us run our businesses online, don’t forget about the power of a personal touch and good customer service!
Apr142009
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hi..I’m just starting to get involved with dropshipping and ecommerce, but shipping from china is ridiculous, and I see competitors offering FREE shipping on all of their products! How do I go about finding, or creating deals like this? Am I supposed to just eat the shipping cost even when it’s 40% of the product price? Any tips would be GREATLY appreciated.
Well in dropshipping its you that has to pay the cost of the shipping. If you know that you are sending a large volume of orders to your manufacturer you can work out a lower cost of goods with them. That can defray some of the cost. I generally don’t like to have merchandise in my house but sometimes if you can’t negotiate a lower cost of goods it might be best to have the product on hand and ship yourself. Thats more wholesaling then dropshipping but you can control the shipping cost that way.
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That’s a very good story pointing out a very common problems with dropshippers. Good thing you had mentioned that in this site.