posted on August 22, 2001 09:38:54 PM
I am thinking of working with a drop shipper, but concerned that the buyer may contact the drop shipper directly for bulk purchases. What is the etiquette involved?
Any suggestions on how to approach the drop shipper? How much mailing information do I give the drop shipper? How do I make clear to the buyer that they need to go through me for purchases without being harsh?
At the very least, it seems I should get a tracking number from the drop shipper to see the progress of the package...
* ~ * ~ * ~ * http://techgems.net
posted on August 22, 2001 09:48:28 PM
I'm glad you asked. I'd also like to know. We received email from a drop shipper wanting to do business, I guess he got our email address through eBay. I checked out his offerings and didn't think they would sell so never got involved. I would like to know how to go about it though in case something worth while comes along.
posted on August 23, 2001 05:03:23 AM
Well, we use many dropshippers for our products. You need to be very careful of someone contacting you to do drop shipping for you. Reputatble suppliers, do not go out on the auctions looking for business. Most legite drop shippers are wholesalers that noticed an up and coming nitche market and decided to fill it. A true drop shipper, will tell you that it will be 2 - 5 dollars extra to drop ship to your customer and you fax them the packing slip and address label or the ones that charge $5 make them for you.
All drop shippers that we work with know that no propaganda is being put into the boxes cause they only deal with resellers that have their tax id. They do not deal driectly with the public. If someone says they do both, steer clear cause that means you are to far down the distribution chain to get a good price anyway.
posted on August 23, 2001 10:29:44 AM
The real concern I would have with a drop shipper is how fast and how efficient they send the merchandise. You are the one building a reputation on quality, and customer service. If a drop shipper takes 10 days or longer to ship after a customer has paid YOU promptly, you might get a poor rating based on something out of your control. I also would want some sort of assurance that they did indeed have the merchandise in stock at all times. Nothing would be worse than selling something only to find the drop shipper is "temporarily" out of stock!
posted on August 23, 2001 03:26:02 PM
I ran into this problem once with a dropshipper. The problem is, they get their stuff dropshipped too, so they aren't even the one's doing the shipping. I don't do business with them anymore.
The prices were great, but the service was lacking because even they didn't have control over the warehouse.
