We signed a contract with them to provide multichannel marketing of our products this was to take 4-6 weeks, at 13 weeks they still had provided nothing but insisted it would be just a couple more days, at 15 weeks we pleaded with them to put just one item up to show good faith we even offered to pay them thousands more. No they answered insisting everything would be up in a couple weeks at 6 months we were contacted because they were no longer receiving payment for the services they have never provided and insisted that everything had launched on eBay and the Amazon launch would only take a few more weeks.
Sadly they had not launched anything but simply collected information we had posted on eBay ourselves scrambled the information and spit it back to eBay, pictures did not match descriptions did not match pricing did not match quantities. Other items were duplicated and some just completely eliminated. They have cost our company at least $25k it is clear to us that they are not simply incompetent. They clearly did not intend to provide the services contracted for since they were unwilling to show us how to post just one listing to the multiple websites as promised, not even one listing to two websites.
They continue to hire sales people and to continue to sell this scam collecting money from unsuspecting clients and using the proceeds to not to provide the services but instead to collect more clients. It’s time for CNBC Jim Cramer to have the CEO back on to explain his Madoff style Ponzi scheme.
Channel Advisor (CA from here on in) contacted us in June 2014. They said they were looking to partner with a bead supplier in the UK and that we fit the bill perfectly. They told us a little about their product but we made it clear we already use a similar sales platform in the UK called Channel Grabber.
We have been selling on eBay (11 sites) and Amazon (7 sites) for many years so did not need CA to help us get onto these market places. However, CA pointed out that they have exclusive access to 10 additional market places such as Mercado Libre, Trade.Me, Buy.com, New Egg, Tesco etc.
We are a very ambitious company looking to always expand and so we signed a 1 year contract, at over $15K(!) for the year. The additional sales from these 10 new market places would cover this cost and hopefully make us some extra revenue.
This is where it all went horribly wrong! ....
We applied for Trade.me in New Zealand who within 2 days rejected us since their eligibility criteria for international sellers is that you have to have been selling $50K per month on eBay Australia for the last 6 months. We are WAY off those sort of levels, but CA had failed to mention this before.
Alarm bells started ringing!
We then asked CA to tell us about the eligibility criteria of the other 9 market places. Prior to signing the contract, the sales guy had said "Don't worry about it mate, you will be fine. No problem getting accepted". It turns out that the elgibility criteria was as follows:
Trade.me - $50K per month sales required on eBay Australia
New Egg - Technology only
Mercado Libre - need to form a Brazilian company!
Redoute - Clothes and fashion only
The other 6 US marketplaces require a US return address
The last one was the killer since we are a small UK company and have no address or indeed any physical presence in the US.
Therefore we were ineligible for all 10 marketplaces :(
Okay, not to panic I thought. Sure we'd wasted some time on setting up data, and also had 2 training calls which I expected to still have to pay for. But there would be no problem cancelling this service since it was not fit for purpose and we had clearly been mis-sold it - at no point did CA make any of the eligibility criteria clear prior to signing the contract.
Our early pleas fell on deaf ears - in fact the Head of UK Sales told us it was tough since we had signed the contract. So we hunted down the CEO of the company who instantly palmed us off to one of his VPs. Shockingly, we got the same answer from him.
"You signed the contract and it is enforceable".
So, CA are happy for us not have a worthwhile product to use and still charge us over $15K for the privilidge. They are a money-grabbing organization who really do not care about helping a small business. We have had to lose a member of staff to cover those costs. Not a great thing to have to do during recession.
The moral of this story is please make sure you do due diligence before signing a contract with Channel Advisor because once they have you, the will take your money regardless.
ChannelAdvisor Corporation Reviews
We signed a contract with them to provide multichannel marketing of our products this was to take 4-6 weeks, at 13 weeks they still had provided nothing but insisted it would be just a couple more days, at 15 weeks we pleaded with them to put just one item up to show good faith we even offered to pay them thousands more. No they answered insisting everything would be up in a couple weeks at 6 months we were contacted because they were no longer receiving payment for the services they have never provided and insisted that everything had launched on eBay and the Amazon launch would only take a few more weeks.
Sadly they had not launched anything but simply collected information we had posted on eBay ourselves scrambled the information and spit it back to eBay, pictures did not match descriptions did not match pricing did not match quantities. Other items were duplicated and some just completely eliminated. They have cost our company at least $25k it is clear to us that they are not simply incompetent. They clearly did not intend to provide the services contracted for since they were unwilling to show us how to post just one listing to the multiple websites as promised, not even one listing to two websites.
They continue to hire sales people and to continue to sell this scam collecting money from unsuspecting clients and using the proceeds to not to provide the services but instead to collect more clients. It’s time for CNBC Jim Cramer to have the CEO back on to explain his Madoff style Ponzi scheme.
Channel Advisor (CA from here on in) contacted us in June 2014. They said they were looking to partner with a bead supplier in the UK and that we fit the bill perfectly. They told us a little about their product but we made it clear we already use a similar sales platform in the UK called Channel Grabber.
We have been selling on eBay (11 sites) and Amazon (7 sites) for many years so did not need CA to help us get onto these market places. However, CA pointed out that they have exclusive access to 10 additional market places such as Mercado Libre, Trade.Me, Buy.com, New Egg, Tesco etc.
We are a very ambitious company looking to always expand and so we signed a 1 year contract, at over $15K(!) for the year. The additional sales from these 10 new market places would cover this cost and hopefully make us some extra revenue.
This is where it all went horribly wrong! ....
We applied for Trade.me in New Zealand who within 2 days rejected us since their eligibility criteria for international sellers is that you have to have been selling $50K per month on eBay Australia for the last 6 months. We are WAY off those sort of levels, but CA had failed to mention this before.
Alarm bells started ringing!
We then asked CA to tell us about the eligibility criteria of the other 9 market places. Prior to signing the contract, the sales guy had said "Don't worry about it mate, you will be fine. No problem getting accepted". It turns out that the elgibility criteria was as follows:
Trade.me - $50K per month sales required on eBay Australia
New Egg - Technology only
Mercado Libre - need to form a Brazilian company!
Redoute - Clothes and fashion only
The other 6 US marketplaces require a US return address
The last one was the killer since we are a small UK company and have no address or indeed any physical presence in the US.
Therefore we were ineligible for all 10 marketplaces :(
Okay, not to panic I thought. Sure we'd wasted some time on setting up data, and also had 2 training calls which I expected to still have to pay for. But there would be no problem cancelling this service since it was not fit for purpose and we had clearly been mis-sold it - at no point did CA make any of the eligibility criteria clear prior to signing the contract.
Our early pleas fell on deaf ears - in fact the Head of UK Sales told us it was tough since we had signed the contract. So we hunted down the CEO of the company who instantly palmed us off to one of his VPs. Shockingly, we got the same answer from him.
"You signed the contract and it is enforceable".
So, CA are happy for us not have a worthwhile product to use and still charge us over $15K for the privilidge. They are a money-grabbing organization who really do not care about helping a small business. We have had to lose a member of staff to cover those costs. Not a great thing to have to do during recession.
The moral of this story is please make sure you do due diligence before signing a contract with Channel Advisor because once they have you, the will take your money regardless.