On August 1, 2018 at 08:21, goldenzrule said...
I didn't email anyone, Portal did. They used the exact email address they asked for me to submit, my rep. If there is an issue with this process, it is on them to fix it. I have never had to check for order confirmations from any of my vendors, ever. If I placed the order, it comes. Enough of the BS of putting the blame on us for ordering through them. Portal did the same thing, saying I AM THE ONE that should have checked my confirmation to make sure it went through. If you want me to use the service, then make it work as it should. I order online mainly from 4 vendors. All 4 have websites that I can order from that work well, 3 of which are very easy to use and one that is not the best site but mainly with finding products you are not sure of what you are looking for. Enter the model number in search and it comes right up. I can order everything I need in a matter of minutes from all my vendors without any issues. If I am waiting to receive confirmations emails and going back to check that the order went through on every order, it will not be faster to use Portal. Sorry, thats just the truth. I'm happy you have had such success, but maybe your usual vendors do not have very good websites. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and continue using them during my testing. They failed at 3 things that make it impossible to move forward with them.
I was actually pulled into this situation by my team (on your order, specifically). We allow dealers to set who their orders go to at any supplier. Some like to use the order desk, some like it to go to their rep, so we let dealers decide. In this case, the order was sent to the rep and they didn't do anything with it. Snap's order desk processes email orders really fast, actually. Anyway, I reached out to the Customer Service manager at Snap concerning this situation. Because they provide fantastic customer service, they comp'd the entire expedited shipping amount with a credit. It doesn't always end up this positive, but I was happy we were able to work with them to make it right for you. Our team does everything in our power to help dealers when situations arise.
1) their pricing is off on items. Not every item, but enough that it means I have to verify pricing on every item I add to a proposal if I do not know the correct price off the top of my head.
As Fred mentioned, it's a challenge for us to manage multiple pricing levels across hundreds of suppliers and thousands of manufacturers. We have a full time data team that works with dealers to dial in their pricing. Some vendors are more difficult than others, and other vendors make sure their pricing is accurate for dealers (like Capitol Sales). We try to encourage dealers that if you see any pricing discrepancies, let us know and we'll work with you to get you in the correct pricing tier or load custom pricing for your account. Our goal is to make it as painless as possible.
We do make it easy for vendors to keep their pricing up to date and accurate for dealers via secure FTP data feeds into our site. Not everyone does that yet, though.
2) the updated proposal software is glitchy and does not look good when printed/sent. They may fix this over time, or part of these issues. Someone mentioned they said they have no plans to fix some of the issues that fall under this umbrella
To be honest, we've always battled with the PDF print version, as it was really designed for web delivery. We are working on a condensed version of the proposal. It's in development (not planned - they are actually working on it). I hope it comes soon, as I hear and agree with dealers who end up with too much white space on the PDF print. Let me know specifically what issues you were told we do not plan to fix and I can clarify.
3) the ordering system needs a major overhaul. This experience added both unneeded stress and a lot of wasted time on my part.
I mentioned this in another post a few minutes ago, but we just finished building support for EDI - automatic ordering - which most larger vendors support. This removes the human element for larger vendors and allows us to dump the order right into their ERP. We have several large vendors we're working on right now getting it implemented. As we continue to develop and offer this to vendors the experience will be greatly improved.
