Your "issues" are personal preferences. They are response to others concerns about printed proposals being long. Things change. Sorry



I like the new menu and I'll gladly pay the new prices. Lucky for me, this restaurant pays me to eat there...

Found another "bug" that is an annoyance.  Trying to order some gear and a Yamaha AVR is not listed as being available from my supplier.  That is, its not an option as an authorized product.  There is only one Yamaha AVR showing, that is an RX-A670.  I need an 870.  I chatted with them and they said I have to go through a manual process of adding them as an authorized seller for the unit, but I will have to do this for every model being that I mostly sell Yamaha.  It takes some time and would be quicker to just go to my supplier's website and order.  Not the end of the world, but definitely annoying.  I haven't added it yet and will see how easy/long of a process it is.  Hopefully nothing to it, will see shortly.

Ok, not too bad.  You do have to enter your own cost price so you do have to go to suppliers site or have a price sheet open if you don't know the pricing, but otherwise not much to it.  Never had to do that before.  If I wasn't ordering through them, I would just select another supplier to add to a proposal.

Yeah, I'd say 10 percent of items in the catalog aren't perfect. Specifically Lutron through my supplier. I have to assume that's as much my suppliers fault as it is anyone's. And maybe not even "fault" just growing pains since the vendor isn't familiar with a 3rd party pulling their data yet.

Even if 10 percent of the time I have to get creative with generic parts up updating TV prices or manually sending orders to C4, it's still saves me at least 10 hours a week. Plus, I can now literally sit in the back of my conversion van and do proposals from my iPad between stops at the beach.

I'll take small text and images in exchange...

So I placed over $4000 in product order through Portal.  I need a portion to arrive by tomorrow, and coming from Snap.  I ordered in on Thursday or Friday of last week.  I checked for tracking and received none.  Check Snap's site and it doesn't show the order.  Check portal and it just says processing.

So I got on Chat with Portal to see what is going on.  They said that it looks like Snap didn't open the email.  They suggested I call them to get the order processed.  In fact they said, verbatim, "I might suggest sending the order to their order desk and copying your rep moving forward".  So you want me to use your ordering service AND copy my reps and various vendors?  What?  You are pushing me to use your system for ordering, and all you do is send an email that may or may not get answered with no follow up.  Because we are approaching the shipping cutoff of Snap, I had to go directly to their site and place the order for what I absolutely need to arrive tomorrow and select overnight shipping.  I let Portal know I expect them to pay for the shipping and that this order will count towards my $5000 total. Honestly, I do not know I will continue with them if the ordering portion of the service does not work as advertised.  I already find their competitors proposals to look better, is just about as easy to use and almost as quick.  If I am not going to order through Portal then I will be subject to the $50 fee.  The competition has the same fee with a better looking product.

Now instead of having dinner with the family I have been dealing with this and am now waiting on hold with Snap to ensure the product goes out.  Their shipping cutoff is in 5 minutes. If it doesn't go out, I expect someone from Portal to get in a car, go pick it up, and get it to me tomorrow.  Waste of my time...

Talking with Portal's "Happiness Director".  He said that Portal will absolutely not pick up my next day shipping on the order I had to place today.  The onus was put back on me again because I should have gotten an email confirmation.  No, your system is broken if I order through you and for whatever reason the order does not get placed.  If the goal is to make everything easier, I should be able to simply place the order and be done.  I've now wasted an hour and a half on this issue tonight.  If I just ordered through snap's site like I always do, I would have spent 0 minutes on this now.

That’s terrible. And the fact their system screwed up, left you hanging and they won’t do a damn thing about it?

What the hell is going on over there?

I had a very similar experience today, to say i was underwhelmed would be a fair assessment
I’m actually wondering if it’s going to make sense for me in the long run.
If i hadn’t logged in to check up on the progress I’d be up $hit creek right now as well.
The whole making it easier was a complete fail today.

I just dont see the benefit of adding a middle man to the mix. What could be easier than just using snaps website? You know it works. You know it gets processed. You know it ships. You know you get confirmations. You know you get tracking numbers.

I feel for you guys.

I placed an order through Portal the other day and I know to keep checking back to see if orders have been accepted. I even emailed one of my vendors to make sure they opened the Portal order.

I agree, it should not have to be this way.

You get a confirmation when the order is confirmed by your vendor. And you can check on portal if this has happened under orders.

To me, if there is no electronic connection, as if you are placing the order on the distilled/mfg's site then there is no point.

At a min, they should ditch the current method and use a special affiliate web link to the prospective sites and put the items in the cart. Thus, they get credit for the sale that way. Then I can log in review and place it. Far less work then what has to be done now to review and wait etc and way less of a chance of a mess up.

I only tried the order placement once a long time ago. In a similar fashion, the disty that was supposed to get the order did not get it for some reason or another. That was the last time I did that.

Since then just been using it for proposals.

Using email to vendors for orders from portal is not a good way to do business.
"For that reason, I'm out."

We see what you did there,,,That's funny.