Poor support from sellerdeck

[chickenhouseman]

isn't sellerdeck cloud just sellerdeck hosting a magneto system? Neither cloud or 2016 are on the sellerdeck.com site (USA)

[zgap111]

From their ECOM 2016 email:

Historically at the SellerDeck annual conference we have unveiled a new version of our desktop software, but this year we have something new and exciting to introduce, the next generation in ecommerce: SellerDeck Cloud.

SellerDeck Cloud is a complete ecommerce system that is tailored to meet your specific business requirements. Powered by the world’s most most popular platform, Magneto, coupled with a suite of hand-picked extensions that are proven to help increase sales and profits, SellerDeck Cloud can become a truly exceptional website for your business.

Features include:

State of the art hosting optimised specifically for SellerDeck Cloud
Expert support and advice from Cloud specialists
The ability to manage your store from anywhere with an internet connection
A quicker customer ordering process with a state-of-the-art one page checkout
A great selection of modern responsive designs for your store, or our design team will craft you a truly bespoke store
The ability to automatically email customers receipts and invoices as PDFs

Our expert team of designers, developers and digital specialists will be be on hand at the conference to demonstrate SellerDeck Cloud and answer all your questions.

So whoever's going to their conference tomorow, will know what it is...

[EdHarrison]

Such a shame such features were not targeted at desktop, or indeed a viable affordable migration option for existing loyal customers....

An interesting point - look at the contributors to this post join dates....loyal ... very! That must equal a total of decades of support contracts, hosting and probably payments.

I put a ticket into support first thing on Monday, although not a critical problem it is Wednesday PM now, still nothing, if I left an issue with my customers for a couple of days they would likely shop elsewhere.

[zgap111]

look at the contributors to this post join dates....loyal ... very! That must equal a total of decades of support contracts, hosting and probably payments.

Wow... I just noticed... I joined Oct2006 = nearly 10 years ago!

We've only taken up support contract for the past 2 years... previously it was all good and we never required it... Now we do need it.

I remembered when cover was ~£200 per year... and we never took it up because the software was good for us, and it was expensive (yeah!)...

For us, the software was good, then recent major releases and the switch away from Windows XP has caused so many problems - even a recent machine install of Office 365 killed Sellerdeck, had to uninstall/re-install various office components to get Sellerdeck working...

[zgap111]

I noticed a live chat link today on their support ticket page, so opted for that...

I put a ticket into support first thing on Monday, although not a critical problem it is Wednesday PM now, still nothing

Sorry, my chat to them may have slowed down your ticket... But I have a funny feeling these live chat's are 1 person handling 20 chats... the wait between messages are sooo long.

[Jan]

I think that there is still a market for desktop apps, we had a flurry of trials last week for our desktop plugins when a cloud based competitor went down for two days, costing their customers thousands of pounds.

[chris ashdown]

I wonder how many people using a cloud system would have prefered a disktop version if it had had (opps) a lower staring price like monthly payments

You can try your hardest to remain master of your own destiny or hand it over to a nameless person either screwing it up or a hacker who fancies denial of service when the companies get larger and a nice target to screw up.

I mean even the mighty Sellerdeck payments went down yesterday with one clever disk not talking to another

[chickenhouseman]

support seems to be variable. my last ticket was answered promptly although i solved it myself. Before that they allocated a ticket to someone that was on holiday and that took 3 weeks to resolve an error in my network settings to move from http to https. Perhaps the only person doing support was on holiday? I sent the network file to them with the original ticket as i suspected it but we went on a long route around sending snapshots, suggesting non standard layouts before we got to a solution. This is the only time I've had an issue with support.

[feemish]

wow this is a rather depressing thread isnt it?

Reading through it has made me realise that I'm not on my own in feeling rather sad at what seems like the demise of a trusted old friend. I've been using SellerTinic for 10 years, and I also wanted to stick with the desktop for the same reasons mentioned above.. Even when everyone started jumping ship a few years ago, I remained loyal.. When they told us that desktop would be the main focus of the new sellerdeck, and that all the features we wanted were coming.. I believed! I suppose I wanted to believe... but now it just feels like a long slow lingering sink into a swamp!

Why would we go for Magneto via Sellerdeck? There are plenty of Magneto developers out there.. I dont get it.

So anyway, please message me with your various advice on where you will be looking for your next solution. I'm really interested in knowing which solutions people are considering...

[EdHarrison]

Ma-gento is the market leader, SellerDeck themselves have all but admitted this is the way forward as their own new focus is indeed a Mag-ento (why will this forum not allow that word tut) cloud based solution, so do we stay with a platform that our own provider is slowly abandoning in favour of what essentially was their rival?

[Mike Hughes]

The way I see it the focus is not about the platform per se but more about the market for add on services.

Sellerdeck have undoubtedly built up a lot of knowledge and expertise about ecommerce and what it takes to succeed and are looking to leverage that by selling value added services to mid market, fast growing retailers (the kind of people who will pay good money for outside help to get them where they want to be and keep them there). These are the kind of people who will most likely be using Ma-gento for their selling system so I'd say the focus on Ma-gento for value added services is the only one that really makes any sense.

As an ecommerce platform, Sellerdeck desktop is a great solution for small independent retailers. Particularly if they have some technical skills, or even just a little bit of technical confidence. It's just that we're not the kind of people who are going to be paying big money for extra services.

[John Ennals]

As an ecommerce platform, Sellerdeck desktop is a great solution for small independent retailers. Particularly if they have some technical skills, or even just a little bit of technical confidence. It's just that we're not the kind of people who are going to be paying big money for extra services.

I absolutely agree. If you have a standard retail business, buying goods in bulk and taking card and PayPal payments only, then Sellerdeck Desktop may not be for you if you want to avoid technical involvement.

However, if you are a small business (in my case one man) and your requirements are a little out of the ordinary, Sellerdeck is more flexible and feature-rich than many of its online competitors, despite what they would have you believe.

Inspired (and depressed) by this thread I have just done a comparison between SD and three well-known UK based online competitors. All three of them:

• Were more expensive than Sellerdeck Desktop, even with Sellerdeck Cover
• Lacked at least one feature which my business requires
• Had demo sites that subjectively appeared slower than my current site
• Imposed a limit on the number of products I can have - which is no good to me.

And, of course, if they went bust I would lose my website and my income.

Sellerdeck Desktop gives me control over my website and operational reslience. Thanks to Sellerdeck I was able to make my site responsive in time for mobilegeddon, without any need to contact support and for the price of a standard Cover contract. SD's inherent SEO is great. A Google search for "Old toys" (which is what I sell) puts my site on page one; total spend on SEO to date is zero. Sellerdeck Desktop has a lot going for it, and it is a shame that Sellerdeck now put so little effort into marketing it - witness their insipid website.

I know it's frustrating when you find you know far more about the product than the support agent you're speaking to, but this is inevitable if they are learning on the job and you have been using SD for 10 years or more. We can't expect the product gurus to be manning the phones. However we possibly could expect better first line support if there were more users with Cover contracts generating revenue to fund training.

John

[guccij]

Superb reply John and thanks for doing the research I was about to do myself viz cost of online platforms.

To add to your post, I would say that you can make the desktop as simple or as complicated as you like.

For me, I use some add ons and find them indispensable to running a small and efficient set up with a few employees.

Put it this way: I just did my VAT for the last quarter which ended yesterday and it took me 20 minutes. That time and labour saving alone is worth so much.

Now just the accounts to do - financial year ended yesterday as well!

[feemish]

but the other online solutions look so much better dont they?
Out of the box, the designs are swish and modern.
Not wanting to be on too much of a downer, but all our sites look pretty much the same.. and pretty out of date. I even had a customer make a review on trustpilot and say she was wary of using my site as it looked so old fashioned. Not good for me as I sell fashion items! The new trends of design have a look that most new sites adhere to. I'm worried that we look a bit like dinosaurs. That may be fine if you are selling to dinosaurs lol!

[John Ennals]

Definitely, some wizzy new modern-looking responsive themes would lift Sellerdeck Desktop enormously. I bet there are some out there that Sellerdeck could buy in from developers. The stumbling block would probably be the basket and checkout which really need to be re-written from scratch.

I'm lucky that my products lend themselves to a slightly retro website design!