Hurricane threatening my stealth health

phaz0rz · #23 10-06-2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by amzpro

Fwiw, amazon does not excuse shipping delays for ANY reason. If your account isn't on vacation mode and you do not ship on time you will be suspended.

Haha, that's got a lot to do with why I want nothing to do with AZ. Amazon purposely makes their standards nearly impossible to meet because they are in direct competition with their sellers. Ebay is just a venue and they rely on their sellers for revenue, so they're a bit more forgiving from what I've noticed. Ebay does have vacation settings but I'm only going to use that as an absolute last resort.

I got really lucky today. Even though we are under a "state of emergency" and all PO's are supposed to be closed until after the storm, our local PO actually opened today and the mail even ran! So we were able to get about 95% of today's orders out on time. I'll still be taking a hit if PO's are closed tomorrow, but at least tomorrow is Friday so I won't be penalized for late shipments on Saturday and Sunday.

@oompa - I wouldn't be surprised if we lost power for a bit, but luckily we live about 1/2 mile from the power plant. We've lost power in storms before and it never takes them more than a few hours to get it restored. My concern with changing the dispatch time (handling time for those of us stateside) is losing TRS status. Losing that 2% discount would cost me about $1200 more in fees per month, just on the most active account. Plus I'm sure it would destroy my search ranking. :(

nate · #24 10-06-2016

I left FL last night @ 1am. Every hotel on the gulf coast was booked full. I couldn't believe it... I called hotels.com, travelocity, and every hotel google pulled up for hotels in what ever county I was driving through at the time. Every hotel I passed on the interstate and turnpike had full parking lots. I slept for a couple hours at a rest stop in the pan handle, there were about 100 cars at every rest stop down I-10. I've never seen anything like it. I ended up having to drive 8hrs, An hour north into Alabama just to find a hotel. This town is so small it only has one restaurant, this hotel, and a water tower. I barely get AT&T cell service, no data. Its like the movie wrong turn... But the hotel is booked full and almost every car in the parking lot has FL plates.

The eye of this storm is projected to hit or hit close to the island i live on with a storm surge of 10ft. I really hope i have somewhere and some thing to go back to. Guess mother nature plans to give it to me with no Vaseline str8 in the a$$...

On the brighter side... DHL text me today to see if I was still home to deliver a package I had coming. They don't even f#@k-off... At least I know I've still got inventory to come home to.

bluegrass1 · #25 10-06-2016

orlando here now .. change your shipping time to 3 days atleast that will give you little more time to figure it out . looks like tomorrow morning before getting slammed

phaz0rz · #26 10-07-2016

I wish you guys from Florida the best. Not looking like it's going to be much of a problem for us in SC at this point.

phaz0rz · #27 10-07-2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluegrass1

orlando here now .. change your shipping time to 3 days atleast that will give you little more time to figure it out . looks like tomorrow morning before getting slammed

Hey, if it moves 20 miles to the west, you are dead. You can't survive unless you're very lucky. Your kids are going to die also.

https://www.indy100.com/article/fox-...to-die-7349841

bluegrass1 · #28 10-07-2016

nuttn but little wind lot of rain didtn lose power, kids , or disney tickets

jacksonville is floating tho pretty bad that way but we were spared .. best of luck up the cost

phaz0rz · #29 10-09-2016

It wasn't much of a storm for us. Really bad winds for about 6 hours and really bad rain for about 3. The road that comes into our neighborhood was built over a stream years ago, and the intense water flow caused the drainage pipes under the road to wash out, which in turn caused the road to collapse. So we are stuck in our neighborhood until further notice, but at least we have power and internet.

Looks like I'll be throwing our mail across a gaping hole in the road to the mail carrier on the other side.

bluegrass1 · #30 10-09-2016

amzpro · #31 10-11-2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by phaz0rz

Haha, that's got a lot to do with why I want nothing to do with AZ. Amazon purposely makes their standards nearly impossible to meet because they are in direct competition with their sellers. Ebay is just a venue and they rely on their sellers for revenue, so they're a bit more forgiving from what I've noticed. Ebay does have vacation settings but I'm only going to use that as an absolute last resort.

I got really lucky today. Even though we are under a "state of emergency" and all PO's are supposed to be closed until after the storm, our local PO actually opened today and the mail even ran! So we were able to get about 95% of today's orders out on time. I'll still be taking a hit if PO's are closed tomorrow, but at least tomorrow is Friday so I won't be penalized for late shipments on Saturday and Sunday.

@oompa - I wouldn't be surprised if we lost power for a bit, but luckily we live about 1/2 mile from the power plant. We've lost power in storms before and it never takes them more than a few hours to get it restored. My concern with changing the dispatch time (handling time for those of us stateside) is losing TRS status. Losing that 2% discount would cost me about $1200 more in fees per month, just on the most active account. Plus I'm sure it would destroy my search ranking. :(

Amazon's not that bad. You just have to deliver the level of service you agreed to. If you cannot ship as you agreed to then you need to deactivate your merchant fulfilled listings by turning on vacation mode.

The thing is, ebay caters to casual sellers as well as professionals. Amazon wants professional sellers only, and their standards are NOT hard to meet for any professional seller.

For example, their standards are no more than
1% ODR
2.5% cancellations
4% late shipments

Those are MORE than generous. If you're cancelling more than 1 out of 40 orders, or shipping more than 1 out of 25 items late, there's really no valid reason for that. For the former, you're clearly listings things you don't have for sale, so wtf? And for the latter, if you're having a problem with that then you're either not shipping every day or you have more volume than you can handle.

Order defects should almost never happen. Sure, you might get the very occasional unjustified A-Z or negative feedback, but for the most part those are caused by something the seller did wrong. Like if you look at the amazon forums, practically every complaint regarding negative feedback stems from something like the seller not wanting to take a return, or giving a buyer the runaround about it.

rsot · #32 10-12-2016

I hope the best for all those affected by the hurricane.

phaz0rz · #33 10-13-2016

Things are slowly returning to normal. They've finally rebuilt the road coming into our neighborhood which was washed out by the storm, so I can leave again!

rsot · #34 10-13-2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by phaz0rz

Things are slowly returning to normal. They've finally rebuilt the road coming into our neighborhood which was washed out by the storm, so I can leave again!

"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

/musicquote

phaz0rz · #35 10-13-2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsot

"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

/musicquote

Hahaha trust me, I spent plenty of time at The Hotel California during this clusterf**k. It's been ridiculous. Luckily we never lost power like most did, but losing your only access to the outside world SUCKS.