The owners have moved to buydsi.com

I have dealt with them for over 20 years and have nothing but good things to say about them.

I’m still reluctant to use the word ’scam’ though. I still think of a scam as something that is misrepresented or dishonest. So far, even with my low sales, I don’t think they misrepresented their product. And in viewing the StoresOnline Forum posts, I can see that there are plenty of people who are making money with this.

Actually I think the post with the accusation of driving the stock down was directed to Frank Ross, who posted a comment on May 26 (see above).

I’m definitely not affiliated with the company in any way.

Still hoping to make money, but so far I’ve only had 1 sale! D’oh! Not enough to quit my day job! I think my biggest problem is that I don’t have enough traffic because I’ve been really lazy about doing link exchanges.

But…I’m changing companies for my day job (I’m currently a dog walker, recently left my graphic design job because my boss needed to cut my hours), and I’ll have next week off before I start at the new place. I have high hopes to do a lot of things that I haven’t had time to do, including work more on link exchanges. I’m also going to put up an eBay auction (I had one other sale that way). Hopefully by now I have enough positive feedback that I can offer a Buy It Now button, which should attract the people who want it for a gift and don’t want to mess with bidding (you need at least 5 feedback points to be able to offer Buy it Now).

I’m also (right now, actually) reading through the 2007 version of The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on Ebay. It’s an eBook that tells how to use eBay as a lead-generation tool to drive traffic to your website, even if the person doesn’t bid on your auction.

Going slowly, though. It’s a catch-22: If I had enough time to put into this, I’m sure I could get enough sales to let me stay home. But without the sales, I don’t make enough to be able to stay home to put the time into it.

Ah well. Hopefully this new company won’t have such long hours.

–Susie

Good luck on your site and your business. When do you think you’ll make enough money to pay the hosting fee ($25 / month / site)? If you never cross that threshold, will you reconsider your answer to the question “Is this a scam?” You’re following the program pretty much exactly how they recommend, and you’re obviously pretty smart, so if you can’t make money using their software / services / business model, I’d have to say that almost no one can.

(Actually this is kind of cool. This is the first blog I’ve done that actually got a comment in less than 6 months!)

Darlene, thanks for your post. In what I know about the current software, I am glad I made the purchase. My recommendation to you is

1. Give very little weight to complaints made prior to 1 year ago. From what I can deduce, I think the company has made some major changes to both their software and their customer service in the past year. Just the fact that they’ve made efforts to improve says something. I had an experience with a different company once that promised me free software if I attended a seminar. What I got was 30-day trial software that wanted me to purchase after the trial was up. I thought there was just some mistake, so I contacted them and the only reponse I got was, “We don’t know what the problem is. We gave you the link to the software!” I did file a BBB complaint. The result was “This vendor has failed to address this concern.”

2. Keep in mind that the ripoff site investigated and found very little truth in the complaints. Most of them were not even from StoresOnline merchants, and some of the complainers that were merchants did not even try to resolve their issue with customer service.

3. Most importantly: I recommend you really spend time with the software before your 3 days are up. Pretend that you found a dropshipper and that you have product images and prices. Then really try to use the software and the customer service chat to get a test site together. Pretend you’re selling items around your house, for instance, and even take some digital pictures of them if you can. Or even better–download some free images (go to Google, click on Images at the top, and search for dog, bucket, whatever. Then right-click on one of the images, and select Save Picture As, and save it to your computer. Use those as your product pictures.)

This will really give you an informed picture of their product. If before the 3 days are up, you feel they misrepresented their product, then yes, you should cancel. But that hasn’t been my experience.

If you do try to cancel, can you post here and tell us if they gave you any trouble about it?

Fulano, I think Frank has a good point. I agree that everyone should consult the Better Business Bureau when checking out a business.

I did look through the BBB link that Frank posted.

In looking at the dates of the complaints and from what I know about the software and customer service based on my experience, here’s my 2 cents:

A lot of the complaints are prior to 2006. For now I’m going to ignore them because I think the company has made some major changes since then.

I checked with the company about the version of their software. The current version is version 5. They say it has been out for a year.

The summary of the BBB I see (scroll all the way to the bottom) basically says a few things.

BBB Complaint that the software is not easy to use by non-computer people.

This has absolutely not been my experience. I find the software extremely easy to use. Now, granted, I am a computer person. But I’ve used other software that’s very kludgy and non-intuitive. This is not the case here. It is extremely straight-forward. The minimum steps to get your store up and running as far as the software goes are:

1. Select a predefined template. They have little pictures of each so it’s clear what your site will look like.

2. Select an image and logo. Again, they have prefabed images you could use. Now I admit that if you want a different picture, you have to figure out how to get one, but there’s no way around this. There is nothing that makes you have a picture, either.

3. Type in your company name and information.

4. Edit the predefined pages. For example, they have a default shipping policies page. The text says something like “Change this text into your own policy.” You just double click on the text and type. I don’t know how this can be easier.

5. Enter products. Again, very simple. You click on Add, you put in a product description, you upload a picture, you type in a price. Very simple.

Now people may be a little daunted by the tasks that are not related to the softare. These include doing keyword research to try to find a good product to sell, finding a supplier or dropshipper for that product, obtaining the product images and price information from the dropshipper, etc.

There is absolutely no way around needing to do these steps. The only thing I could see that the company might offer is a service to set absolutely everything up for you–help you pick a product, conctact the dropshipper for you, put in your products, etc. They don’t offer that; they just offer the software, tools, and training to have you do that yourself.

I will add that after you purchase, they give you one more full day of training for free. It’s called their bootcamp. They go over everything once more…it’s all things you find in their online tutorials, but they reinforce it one more time, including how to pick a product, how to find a dropshipper (complete with sources and suggestions) and how to set up your products.

BBB Complaint that Defendants failed to provide the promised technical support for the products.

Now this one I can’t understand at all. You can get tech support in 3 ways: by calling, by emailing, and by using their 24/7 online chat. I’ve used their online chat plenty of times so far. True, I’ve gotten a couple of wrong answers, but this is not unusual for a company. Anyone who has tried to get any kind of answer through Paypal knows what I’m talking about. Sometimes I think the Paypal reps are Stepford reps. But I’m digressing…

I did email them about one of the wrong answers I got. They looked up the online chat transcript, contacted the rep, and made sure she knew she had given a wrong answer. I know that because I got an email from her telling me the correct answer.

This actually sheds some light on something for me. After the first seminar, if you purchase, they give you “homework” to do before your all-day training. One thing you have to do is get the online chat piece up and running. You have to start a chat with a rep, write down the rep’s name, and fax the paper in. I guess this is so that they know you can access the online chat.

I will agree that there’s one thing they could do better in this department. In order for the online chat to work, you have to download java. It’s very simple and they give you a link. However, I’ve used many other online chat functions for different companies that worked without you having to do this. I think non-computer people may be intimidated by this and may never get the online chat functionality working. But they can still call and email.

If I were StoresOnline, I would alter this so that you didn’t have to download anything to get online chat to work.

BBB Complaint that they didn’t refund money during the 3 day period.

Now this I can’t say anything about. No experience there. I will say that in my seminar, they definitely mentioned the 3-day right to cancel, and after I purchased, this was one of the papers in my kit.

I will also say that if I were StoresOnline, I would offer a 30-day money-back guaranty if not satisfied. I think the product speaks for itself, but if you don’t give people ample time to try it out, you’re going to get customers like Darlene above who buy it, find complaints on the internet, and want to cancel immediately. If you give 30 days, there won’t be as much of the panic factor to back out. They may get more returns, but I think they’ll make up for it in increased sales. It also gives their company more credibility.

BBB Complaint that they misrepresented that you could make money.

I am going to comment on this even though it was an older complaint. In my seminar, they said at least twice something like, “Do we promise your store will make money? No! It depends on how much time you put into it.”

So to me it sounds like they’ve changed their seminar based on some of these complaints.

I went to my seminar in Massachusetts. I can’t comment on other states, but I would think they’d have a set script.

Wow, sorry this comment is longer than my original post!!

Based on my use of the software so far, I do feel that this company is getting unfair publicity. That’s the problem with the internet; info stays around forever even if it is no longer valid.

Do you remember in August of 2003 when the planet Mars was the closest it had been to the earth in 5,000 years? It was a big deal, right? Planetariums has Mars-viewing parties, people could see it just by looking up. I don’t know anyone who didn’t know about it.

And yet, one year later, I got an email from two different people which said “Next week, Mars will be closer to the earth than it has been in 5,000 years!!!” The email did not have a year on it and it was obviously still circulating from 2003.

C’mon guys! How could you not remember that big event?!

If you Google “Mars close” you’ll find that email is still circulating and fooling people!

That just goes to show you that information on the internet stays around forever, even if it is no longer valid.

Anyway, that’s more like my 2 million dollars worth of comments than 2 cents.

http://www.saltlakecity.bbb.org/commonreport.html?bid=2000585

So far, you are the only positive feedback.

But maybe it’s just too soon to tell.