exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Orders cannot be amended, WHY ?

For starters I do not run my own webstore someone else does. So emailing me asking to add stuff right from the start its not simple. The stock is 40 miles away! There is nothing I can do about it as the store is all run externally and the whole system is automated. I can't run my store as I am unable to package even 1 package up myself due to health problems and I just don't have time either.

Adding items means I have to manually edit the stock SQL database to take them off stock, which I really don't want to screw with as the store does this all automatically. Then I have to tell my girlfriend not to post stuff, wait a week until I can see her to explain stuff.. it ends in in chaos every single time.

Postage is calculated on checkout. Adding items means I then have to add up all your previous items by looking them all up in the database,
Then work out how heavy the new items are, add it all up, then look up how much more it will cost to post, send out reply emails , generate a
external payment link, then people don't pay for 2 weeks and it all ends in limbo and I forget all about it anyway. Then work it all out again as I have no idea who's emailing about what anymore. It creates a lot of problems from start to end and considering I am not making huge profits on stuff in the first place, its really not worth the hassle. Most larger companies don't even offer the option to amend orders, so it's unfair from my point of view to expect such a service.

Overall it creates a huge amount of work for me. If I were to consider doing it, I would have to charge for all the extra time involved. To the point it would be cheaper just to do a second order anyway. I have considered coding a option into my store to amend orders, but again , its huge time involved vs a few items people miss stuff off orders. Time is better spent on trying to keep stuff in stock ,which I am really struggling with.

From The buyers point of view, they think I can just pop the item in the box and bill them , job done. Nope, not that simple. Plus as I keep saying, I have RSI, and clicking stuff around for a hour to edit a order is not something I want to do. I need to look after my health and I am really struggling to keep up with what I am currently doing without adding random chaos in the mix of it all as well.

I keep having to remove my email address from order receipts as 99% of such emails are just asking for stuff I cannot do anyway. It always starts the same with they never put who they are, never tell me order number.. Half the people have no clue what it even is, which complicates things even more.. Then it causes several back and forth emails just to work out who they are.. All it does is hurt my fingers with all the typing.

So anyone who forgets to order items, then you will have to do another order I'm afraid! It's even listed twice in the store checkout that orders cannot be amended and people are ignoring it and asking anyway.

I am sorry if all this annoys people. There is only so much I can do each day, and only so much "service and support" I can give to people.

I forgot to order the cable for the ram upgrade in my recent order. I ordered a cable as a separate order.

I'd appreciate it if you could include the cable with the first order so as to save on dinosaurs and so that you can keep the extra ten pounds for some other project for which you may find it of use.

God bless!

Jeff

Very kind :thanksyellow: :cheers:

I recently made an order including a power supply replacement that I would now rather not receive. It's being sent to the US, so perhaps it's not too late? I sent a private message about changing the order.

I appreciate that it's my own fault for not checking the description more carefully. However if at all possible I'd prefer to change the order. If that's not possible then fair enough.

Thank you

Jobbo wrote: 10 Jan 2024 13:56 I recently made an order including a power supply replacement that I would now rather not receive. It's being sent to the US, so perhaps it's not too late? I sent a private message about changing the order.

I appreciate that it's my own fault for not checking the description more carefully. However if at all possible I'd prefer to change the order. If that's not possible then fair enough.

Thank you

If it's not possible to cancel your order: where are you in the US? Once you receive the PSU, I'll be happy to take it off your hands (Brooklyn, NY), plus shipping. I've been meaning to pick up a second exxos PSU.

I'll PM you.

Amending orders is generally adding not removing. But either way it is not so simple . I'll try and explain and clarify the reasoning behind all this..

Removing is not impossible, but there is no magic "cancel" or "undo" order buttons. I would have to program scripts to do all that, which would result in hundreds of hours of work. Changing orders is problematical because it involves calculations of refunds and re-calculations of postage costs. I have to manually edit the SQL database to remove items and add items back to stock . Again people need to understand I have RSI and every single click and tab swap I do hurts. Is not that I'm trying to be unhelpful, I simply cannot physically do what some people think is simple anymore. I mean how many people would use a computer if they got hit with a sledgehammer on the back of their hand every time they made a click or mouse movement ? That is what I am up against.

I would also have to explain to my girlfriend that some parts of some orders are being posted and others are not. It is very easy to end up confused & mistakes happening when things aren't straightforward. We have been through this many many many times and it always ends up causing a lot of stress for us both. As I don't live with my girlfriend and she is 40 miles away, it adds another layer of complexity and explaining what has changed with what order. My girlfriend suffers with depression and can have anxiety attacks very easily. So things unfortunately have to be kept as simple as possible. Even her going out to the post office is difficult for her to do because of her anxiety issues. She has to walk in the cold this time of year to the post office and she has asthma as well. I told her to limit how often she goes but she does not want to let people down. But she is basically doing this at the expense of her own health.

Also, the whole store system is automated and I basically have zero involvement with store orders. I had to do this because I simply don't have time to deal with orders any more. I don't have time to even keep up with running my store, nevermind all the server chaos which continuously happens and everything in life which wants to get in the way of me getting anything done. The only saving grace that my store is still up and running is because my girlfriend packs the orders for me. Again because of my RSI I cannot even package up one box without causing a lot of pain for myself. It generally takes me 10x longer to pack a box than "normal people". Plus because I generally only sleep two hours a night I cannot do that work because I would just end up making too many mistakes. If girlfriend decided she was not going to do it any more than my store would be shut down and that would be it.

I get asked semi-regularly if I can add items and "they can pay with PayPal". From the buyer's point of view it is incredibly simple to do that and put items in the box. However as people undoubtedly know, I am banned from PayPal. I cannot manually charge people's credit cards either, so I basically have no way of taking payment. I can see from the buyer's point of view that they are buying from "me" and it seems simple to just pop an extra thing in the box and send a bill for it. But it is just not that simple. Again the stock is 40 miles away and I am basically "outsourcing" the running of my store completely to a third party. She does all the work for free also.

Plus any other payment methods means it is some other system I have to keep track of which I don't have time for. From my point of view, using one payment system (Stripe) keeps things simple because when I do my tax return it is a whole lot less paperwork when dealing with one company and one payment method rather than multiple methods and companies. It takes me rather long time to do my tax return because of all the paperwork and I really don't want to make this even more complicated.

Also all the postage is calculated automatically from the web store. Doing things manually takes a lot of time in particular because the post office website keep changing the layout and screwing it up making it more problematic to use as time goes on. Adding or removing items means recalculating the postage costs and refunding. Again, the stock is 40 miles away so it is not so simple to calculate.

So if people want to hate on us because we cannot deal with relatively "simple things" then fair enough. We are both trying our best and I think people also need to realise neither of us get paid for doing all this work. Even though bylaw we are forced to be a business, we are still just a hobby store at the end of the day. I'm trying to give the best possible service to people, but again, when you have a budget of basically zero, it is very problematical to deal with everything.

I will remove the power supply from the order in question. Considering the price and the postage costs I'm not completely heartless. Just I have to emphasise I'm only one person at the end of the day. I'm trying my best with everything but unfortunately I don't make enough money to hire a whole team of people to deal with all the problems under the sun.

I mean sure, if I started selling thousands of items and it was highly profitable, then I would start expanding the system to deal with more problems and requests. Though in terms of Atari land, it is only really on a decline and it is a struggle to even balance the books on the operating costs of my store these days. It's also why I started with donation links to help fund this forum as my store sales may well not be able to fund the costs indefinitely. So I'm not even sure how long my store will ultimately be online for. Frankly it is a enormous feet of engineering ,planning and effort, that the store is online at all these days.

Anyway I think I've waffled on enough..