Esquire online tech shop reporting massive growth

Frontosa can also do online orders using a sort of "online shop" (although not sure how it compares to the Esquire one - for reasons detailed below), but my main problem with it is that it has been completely hobbled by what I can only imagine is a decision made by someone (or a group of someones) who understand nothing about e-commerce or online buying.

Essentially you have to enter in your reseller details to log in, but if you have NOT bought anything from them within the past 30 days you CANNOT log in as your account is removed. You then have to re-apply for access if you wish to purchase, and then if you again have not bought anything within the past 30 days you are removed again.

I don't understand this mentality, I can imagine what the person who made this decision was thinking, but the logic at play is so utterly at odds with reality that it essentially makes the entire system useless. I mean seriously, am I going to go through the mission of having to call Frontosa to get them to reactivate my account every month or am I just going to give sales a call and place my order that way when I *actually* need to make a purchase? I can guarantee you the "offline" version is a lot less hassle if you don't buy from them regularly, and that's really... stupid?
 
Tharaxis said:
Frontosa can also do online orders using a sort of "online shop" (although not sure how it compares to the Esquire one - for reasons detailed below), but my main problem with it is that it has been completely hobbled by what I can only imagine is a decision made by someone (or a group of someones) who understand nothing about e-commerce or online buying.

Essentially you have to enter in your reseller details to log in, but if you have NOT bought anything from them within the past 30 days you CANNOT log in as your account is removed. You then have to re-apply for access if you wish to purchase, and then if you again have not bought anything within the past 30 days you are removed again.

I don't understand this mentality, I can imagine what the person who made this decision was thinking, but the logic at play is so utterly at odds with reality that it essentially makes the entire system useless. I mean seriously, am I going to go through the mission of having to call Frontosa to get them to reactivate my account every month or am I just going to give sales a call and place my order that way when I *actually* need to make a purchase? I can guarantee you the "offline" version is a lot less hassle if you don't buy from them regularly, and that's really... stupid?
Click to expand...

They want to be a Business-to-business (B2B) supplier. That means avoiding retail customers who want to order one part every couple of months. It means that only larger businesses that place bulk orders REGULARLY will deal with them. They can then focus on supporting customers who actually generate revenue for them.

If they deal with retail customers, that means that they have to spend more time processing orders and returns. When it comes to hardware, there are enough warranty issues that they don't want to have to deal with them on an individual basis. The effort to cost ratio is much better when doing B2B and they can keep their costs down in order to provide better prices.
 
Now if only their website didn't suck giant donkey balls. I find it significantly less painful to just use their pricelist, phone in an order using a product code and then drive through to fetch.
 
Cairbre said:
Now if only their website didn't suck giant donkey balls. I find it significantly less painful to just use their pricelist, phone in an order using a product code and then drive through to fetch.
Click to expand...
Don't have a problem with the website myself, usually find what what I'm looking for within a minute or two together with availability. If what I need is not in stock in PE I'll phone and check that it'll arrive in the weekly shipment before ordering.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X