StoresOnline.com - description of personal experiences with StoresOnline

December 19, 2006 - Business Reply:

StoresOnline is committed to customer satisfaction and is constantly improving its products and services. StoresOnline is eager to satisfy its customers by fixing problems and overcoming misunderstandings. If StoresOnline has problems with its software or its services, then a detailed complaint about what is wrong is necessary for StoresOnline to remedy the situation. General postings made about StoresOnline’s products or services are often unclear as to what consumers want StoresOnline to do. StoresOnline’s products are constantly improved when customers identify specific glitches in the software or shortfalls in its services. Indeed, the latest version of StoresOnline software, introduced earlier this year, is a result of detailed and clear feedback from StoresOnline customers. We urge you to contact StoresOnline and identify your concerns. Please provide your full name, address, telephone number, and StoresOnline product license numbers. StoresOnline will respond to your email and will find a resolution to your questions and concerns. Other useful information about StoresOnline can be found at its website at www.storesonline.com. StoresOnline provides small business owners and entrepreneurs with eServices to help their customers successfully market their products and services. Whether a company wants to extend an existing business to the Internet, or launch the next big idea, StoresOnline's eServices are there to help each step of the way. From education, to training, to eCommerce-enabled websites, StoresOnline seeks to be the best in the business. StoresOnline's software platform has continuously developed over the past decade, evolving to fit the needs of the dynamic, global economy. Today, the development platform (StoresOnline Pro) sets the precedent as small business owners and entrepreneurs offer their products and services to the world. You should not only consider what StoresOnline is claiming about its commitment to customer satisfaction. Consider the recent report written by Ed Magedson, founder of RipoffReport.com, detailed below. Please visit www.ripoffreport.com to confirm this report. Through exhaustive research in conjunction with RipOffReport, StoresOnline found that only 12% of complaints filed on that website were true StoresOnline customers. In that report Ed Magedson - Founder, Rip-off Report, stated: “Rip-off Report discovered disgruntled ex-employees, competitors and persons who have taken a "short position" in StoresOnline Stock have tried to victimize StoresOnline repeatedly. Actually, Rip-Off Report's investigation reveals that many of the complainants are not StoresOnline's customers at all, but some of the aforementioned miscreants instigated others to file complaints without even first contacting StoresOnline customer service.

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Rip-Off Report's investigation of StoresOnline shows that StoresOnline is fulfilling its commitment to provide excellent customer service.” StoresOnline has researched this consumer’s complaint and has determined this customer received a full refund. Sincerely, Customer Service

Complaints.com received the following on March 26, 2003:

From: Steve Email User

RE: StoresOnline.com - description of personal experiences with StoresOnline

In my opinion, StoresOnline has an outrageously overpriced product, which lacks certain necessary (and industry standard) features, has slow response time (as compared with other web sites), has inaccessible and poorly designed training materials, has a difficult to use administrators interface, and provides terrible customer service. Read further for more details. After doing further research, I have found that StoresOnline has multiple complaints with the Better Business Bureau concerning misunderstandings about information provided at the workshop, the company's no refund policy, its customer service, and the optional coaching services which are provided by Professional Marketing International (PMI), a separate company (which also has complaints from the Better Business Bureau). Their sales tactics are deceptive (see below), as they state their product supports features and capabilities which in fact they do not have, or they do have but do not work. StoresOnline preys upon the uninformed and uneducated in order to make money. For example, here are some of the deceptive comments made by StoresOnline at the seminar I attended: StoresOnline says that you don't even need a computer to set up your Internet Storefront. This is technically true, but not practical. What they don't tell you is how to select the design template for your web site, how you will verify the web site is actually laid out the way you want, and how you will settle transactions (i.e. mark them as completed so that the customer is billed).

If you don't have a computer, don't try to set up a web site with StoresOnline or anyone else. (of course, if you don't have a computer, you're probably not reading this list of problems). If you do want StoresOnline to program your website, you will spend additional money over and above the outrageous fees they already charge. Their president, Jay Poelman, stated in an interview with MSNBC that you really do need a computer to use their product.

StoresOnline also says that you will get started on building your Internet Storefront more quickly by using the "StoresOnline Complete Store Building CD-ROM". However, this CD-ROM does not actually contain any storebuilding information, including design templates, tutorials, or examples. This CD-ROM simply displays some pretty graphics and then tries to connect you to their web site. If your intention is to use this CD-ROM to build your web site from a computer that does not have an Internet connection, you are SOL. Does SOL stand for StoresOnline or for @#$#-out-of-Luck?

StoresOnline demonstrated five web sites during their presentation, so that people could see what types of products are being sold on the Internet. Unfortunately, none of these web sites are actually hosted by

StoresOnline. These five web sites are Cow Pie Clocks, Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, and Dog Doo, 10Kplus.com, and WheatGrassKits.com.

StoresOnline includes a Sample Joint Venture Business Proposal in their product materials. However, it is important to note that the originator of the material is really the daughter of StoresOnline CEO Jay Poelman. In addition, here are some of the problems I discovered with StoresOnline while using their product: The Better Business Bureau has received many complaints about StoresOnline, for several reasons, including some which are listed below.

Contrary to StoresOnline Presenters, their customer service department is terrible. They are rude, and not at all helpful. They do not return phone calls or e-mails, provide answers that don't answer the question, and in many instances do not seem to know what they are talking about.

Their website is frequently down or very slow. About 10% of the time that I am working on my Internet Storefront I find that their website is down or very unresponsive.

For the first 4 months after I signed up with StoresOnline, their Online Tutorials (this is the only version of a manual that you can get) could not be downloaded from their web site, even though their customer support said that these manuals could be downloaded. I had to repeatedly ask them to e-mail them to me because they could not be downloaded. I do not know if they have fixed this problem or not.

They support an online coupon, however, this only allows the customer to print the coupon and bring it to your physical storefront to redeem. The customer cannot redeem a coupon online, i.e. enter a coupon code via the internet storefront and automatically receive a discount. Therefore, if the customer does not live in your immediate area, coupons are meaningless to them.

You can build your product info in Excel and then upload it to StoresOnline. However, the product features are not loaded in the order they are listed in the spreadsheet. They appear to be listed in a random order.

While their product supports product variations (ex. Size S, M, L, XL), you can only partially build product variations in the excel import spreadsheet. After you import the product data, you will need to go through each product via the web interface to add any specific pricing or part number info.

StoresOnline's web interface continually takes over the foreground of your PC when running multiple applications, and is extremely annoying.

When importing product variations from Excel, you must enter them in the reverse order from the order you want them displayed in. The manuals do not mention this anywhere. Once you make this mistake, you must manually correct each item that was imported, which takes quite a long time (approx 2 minutes per item via cable modem, slower via 56K modem).

If you put quotes around any part of a product description when importing the data from Excel, their software will move the quotes to the beginning and end of the entire product description, requiring you to manually correct each item.

Their tech support does not always know what they are doing and sends you on wild goose chases. For example, they told me to use a particular FTP client application for uploading pictures to their site, and they sent me the software via e-mail, but the software did not work. I found another FTP software package on the internet for free, which worked just fine.

The Merchant account they sell you is too expensive. Theirs sells for $999. You can get one elsewhere for less than $150.

They do not include your own domain name in the package they sell you (i.e. ) but force you to use their name (i.e. . If you wish to have your own domain, you can get it from them for $15/month. This is outrageous, as you can get your own domain name elsewhere for less than $15/year.

When you define the default URL for your website (i.e. ), it only works for the default home page. All other pages revert to the site number (i.e. ) and your store name does not appear ever again in the web address bar.

When you relate products, and then upload them, and then re-upload them later, each related product will be listed twice. You then need to manually correct each item, which takes 1-2 minutes per item if you have a broadband connection.

It is my opinion that the StoresOnline interface could never work over dial-up connection. It would be way too slow due to the way their interface works. If you only have a dial-up connection, you are better off looking for someone else's product.

I sent a letter of complaint to their CEO (Poelman) and Chairman (Danks) which went without response. If the CEO and Chairman don't believe in responding to complaints and attempting to provide good customer service, you can bet the entire organization won't either.

StoresOnline has a "business partner" to provide you with coaching so that you can more quickly build your web site, and to improve your chances for success. However, their partner expects you to pay $5,000 - $15,000 for this service, yet they think it is unreasonable to give you a business proposal in writing. Do they seriously think that this is how reasonable people conduct business? This business partner, "Professional Marketing International", aka "PMI", also has numerous complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Bad Business Bureau. PMI is the same company which produces the "Internet Treasure Chest" infomercial on TV, which also has numerous complaints with both bureaus.

StoresOnline does not publish a toll free number for their customer service organization, however I found one that works. It is 877-492-6490. You would think for the amount of money they charge for their services, they would provide toll-free customer support.

When you relate products to each other, you need to manually retype the description of each related product. Their software is not smart enough to be able to use the product number of the related product to automatically pull the related product's description.

Their on-screen receipt does not display in a printer friendly mode. The right 1 - 1 1/2" of the screen are not printed, which includes most of the pricing information.

Their system is sophisticated enough to automatically send an e-mail confirming the receipt of an order, it will not automatically send a follow-up e-mail to the customer when the order is shipped, providing the customer with the tracking number.

If you are using StoresOnline's software in a joint-venture arrangement to set up web sites for other small businesses, you do not have the ability to set up a 2nd username and password so that your client can log in and settle transactions and add tracking numbers only. You must either do this yourself, or give your client your username and password, which allows them to make any changes to the web site, including deleting the entire website.

Their software cannot prohibit a shipping option to certain area. For example, UPS does not offer ground service to either Alaska or Hawaii (for obvious reasons). However, you cannot prevent a person in either Alaska or Hawaii from selecting UPS ground as their shipping option. The only workaround their tech support department was able to come up with to prevent this is to add an excessive surcharge to the UPS Ground shipping option for only Alaska and Hawaii, so the customer will choose one of the available shipping options, which will appear to be less expensive.

You cannot automatically limit the number of products appear on a single page (so that pages don't load too slowly), with the extra products carrying over to extra pages. You need to manually map products to extra pages, and then map the pages to each other so that a person can jump from page to page.

You cannot specify the sort order of products on pages. For example, if you want to have things sorted by price, color, brand name, etc. you are out-of-luck.

StoresOnline will substitute pictures of your products from time to time. For example, they substituted a picture of a scantily clad woman for a white gold wedding ring on my jewelry web site. When I refreshed the screen, the correct picture returned.

You can only load one picture for each product, eliminating the possibility of displaying multiple views of the same product. This reduces the number of products that their website will support since some products really require more than one view of the product.

StoresOnline says they will submit your web site to the search engines, but after having them submit my web site to the search engines 6 months ago, I have yet to see my website in any of the search engines as it was submitted by StoresOnline. Thankfully I was able to submit my site to the search engines via other means (which were free), or I wouldn't be listed at all. I am in the process of seeking a refund from StoresOnline for not providing the product and service that they committed to at the seminar.