Voile panels and blinds

We've had these voiles in for some time now and receive some fabulous feedback from them.
We know they're great value and they pretty much sell themselves.

Whilst we have a fair amount in stock, sadly when these are gone there won't be any more.

We have in plain colours and patterned blinds.

Right now the colours we have are blue, lilac, yellow, white, peach and terracotta, plus white and cream in the patterned blinds.

We've noticed people not just buying them for windows, some have bought for 4 poster beds and others for decorating walls and even as a wedding backdrop, how exciting. Also as the fabric is actually less from us than the same fabric not made into curtains, so we've even sold some to people who were cutting them up for other uses (we don't mind!).

Anyway this is the current stock, live on Ebay

Keeping up with the future

Ever wondered how many blog posts actually start with "sorry I haven't posted anything for a while"?

A recent study I just made up (come on, most of them are, I'm just admitting it!) says that 32% of blog posts begin exactly like that or something along those lines.

It is hard to keep up. Prioritising is the order of the day, I'm still getting used to fatherhood, and am prepared for at least a further 20 years to keep getting used to it! There does seem to be more things to keep up with than ever before, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, they never used to exist and it wasn't that long ago either. They are there though, so if you use them you need to keep up.

The internet has changed everything and is still changing itself. On a forum I occasionally frequent (another thing to keep up with), there are debates about Ebay and Amazon and their decline, rise, failings, benefits, etc, truth is no one has a clue as to where they are going. Amazon seemed to appear from nowhere, I don't really need to tell you that you can buy (and sell) almost anything on Amazon to anyone in the world (although amazingly not as yet in Australia), yet their core market of books, cds and dvds is dwindling away. Amazon's increasing market is in downloads, books, music, film and tv programmes can be purchased and even rented, how amazing is it that items that don't really have a physical presence can be such a growing market? Even when Amazon started they didn't know that was going to happen.

As Ebay has grown so has people's belief that they have a right to use it, that it is somehow public domain and not a business. Sorry chaps, but Ebay is a business and they need to make their profit, one of Ebay's biggest failings has been its success, the bigger it grows, the more users it gets, the more it gets its detractors, and people complaining are a much louder voice than those happy souls who are watching the first series of House that they just purchased for under a fiver (guess what the last thing I bought was?!).

So, how else, I hear you ask has Ebay's success been counterproductive to Ebay? Think of all the items that were once upon a time rare and hard to find that now everyone and anyone can sell on Ebay, coins, stamps, pots, pictures, books, music, etc. Where before you would have to go to a dealer to find Fly Fishing by JR Hartley, a simple search on Ebay would find 27 copies of it. Where the dealer could previously charge £100 for a rare copy, JR Hartley's ex wife is knocking them out for a fiver. Previously Ebay could command the £100 too, but that decreases over time. That's not to say Ebay is dwindling away, just that markets change as they adjust to a different world. For every market that has been depleted by the internet there is another one that has had a growth spurt, just think how many more padded envelopes are sold now than ten years ago.

It could be that Amazon and Ebay join forces one day, with Ebay handling physical items and Amazon the digital. Perhaps Ebay will move into downloads. Maybe Apple will set up an outlet store and sell half price downloads. As high street names seem to be dwindling away Woolworths, Habitat, Ethel Austin, Threshers, Peacocks and others on the way, the internet is still growing, it would be a fool who would bet against names such as Google, Ebay, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, not being around in ten years, but what about 20 or 50 or even 100? Go back 20 years and none of them existed so how much of a hold can they have?
Won't we get fed up of new things coming along and decide that we want to stick with what we have? Or will change become the norm and we'll jump from one social media to another, from one selling site to another?

Has anyone else chuckled when they've seen a combined telephone directory/yellow pages and how small they are now? Let's hope JR Hartley still uses his and not the internet, I'd hate for him to find out what his ex wife said about him on Ebay!

From here to Paternity

On March 1st 2012 at 8.25am (the records show 8.24, but I know better!) my life changed forever and unlike quite often in the past, this time it was for the better, his name is Linus and he's our new baby.

It's been an intense week, without all the details, the birth process started on Tuesday 28th at around 4pm and then laboured on for the next 40 hours! The outcome was truly magnificent and both baby and his mum are doing great.

As a self employed chap I don't get the paternity pay, but I do get the chance to mould my hours to what my family may need me for, so no complaints from me there.

With the long labour and being a few days early it did throw off my Ebay schedule and a few parcels were delayed, the assault on the Ebay seller rating stars can be problematic and customers would be within their rights to mark us down for postage delays, however when I contacted those concerned they have all been brilliant. There are plenty of tales of how troublesome Ebay buyers can be, I've rarely found that, friendly, polite and engaging, it really can be a great community.

So for followers of our Facebook page, Ebay account or mailing list, here's a picture of my new boss!

Meeting Your People ;)

I've been watching programmes about the Queen for her Diamond Jubilee, one of the things I've often noticed is that she always looks pleased meeting people and more so meeting members of the public than fellow dignitaries.

I just love this picture I found, via http://www.koconnellfish.com/news.

I've mentioned before that my parents were shopkeepers, whilst my mum was perfectly friendly my dad enjoyed nothing more than chatting with customers, he was friendly, nosy and cheeky all at once. He had an amazing ability to say things that would sound rude from anyone else and get a laugh. I still occasionally try it and usually end up with a dirty look! He also remembered names and if he didn't know them he'd make one up, again no one was ever bothered. My dad spent his first 8 years in the East End of London and then in Manchester and was always around market traders from being a small boy. When I say market traders, I mean the fun type that you rarely see nowadays, when I occasionally visit markets I often want to tell some of the sellers to smile a bit, they do seem lifeless places. Anyway I'd guess my dad's bonhomie (he wouldn't have known what that meant!) came from the markets and from a couple of his uncles, who were the funnest and warm people you could ever meet. Hopefully some of it rubbed off.

A lot of my trading has been online or when I had some interaction with the public I was in a role that kept me at a distance a lot of the time. There doesn't seem to be many environments now where there is a personal touch. In the massive supermarkets you will rarely see the same person checking you out, banks rarely have one manager you will see, if they ever allow you to see them, even most of our postmen (they are all men too) are lacking in any kind of interpersonal skills. The sad thing is a lot will have been trained in customer relations.

As I started writing these blogs to coincide with an attempt to add something personal to our Facebook page, I realised that this is interaction. It may be different and most of my customers are sadly nothing more than a name and address, but I can interact more if I like and if others like.

So I'll add a joke or two to the page, will gladly chat about anything you like and add a bit of fun to the proceedings, and if I try to be rude like my dad was I can just add a winky face ;) and get away with it!

Thanks for waiting

There was a recent programme on Channel 4 about how much help or not the automated world is to us. There was a focus on automated supermarket checkouts, the upshot was that they were more useless than a cashier, checkout times were slower ant that overall we don't like them. I consider myself quite intelligent, yet the amount of times a barcode has gained the upper hand on me is ludicrous. Also I recently purchased some sweet potatoes (I'm dead posh me!) and took them to an automated checkout, I had to look them up to weigh them. Obviously they'll be under s for sweet, oh no, they're under p, for potato sweet, surely it can't be beyond the remit of Sainsbury's (told you I was posh) programmers to have them under both. Other items to look up are even more difficult, I've still no idea what an apple and blackberry danish is under, I gave up and went to a human.

There seems to be a gulf between what people want and what the large retailers think we want. I personally don't want to be told "thanks for waiting", every time I shop in a certain store, if I have been waiting it often sounds insincere, especially as they say it when you get to the checkout with one item, with no one on front of you. They then make it more ludicrous when they ask if you need any help with your packing with your one item.

I can remember when staff in food stores had to remember the price of everything, those days before barcodes, I can't say this was a bygone age I remember with rose tinted specs, in fact I remember the staff being quite rude, throwing carrier bags at you (and there were always shops that charged for bags, back when only the Wombles did recycling!). Plenty of people get nostalgic for Woolworths, but in some parallel universe I'm probably still waiting to get the disc for an Oasis CD from the surly teenager that worked there.

So certain aspects of retail have changed and as I've previously mentioned customer service in internet times needs to really be stepped up, but personal customer service and not automated. Telephone support for major companies should not use numbers that most of us have to pay for, who else gets irked by having to pay to call an 0800 number on a mobile? I always use saynoto0870.com but it doesn't always come up with the goods, my last phone bill had a £1.20 charge for a 2 minute call registering a new debit card, great customer service, I didn't have any other way to register the charge, thanks bank. I've probably got a few hundred blogs on banks so I'll probably leave them there, except a new trend in banks to ask if they can "help you with anything else today?" when you have gone to a cashier, a weird attempt to be personable and friendly, as though you would have thought they could only help you with one thing if they didn't ask. Despite that though the face of banks is a whole lot friendlier than it used to be (whether they actually are is open to debate), old banks were sterile and stern looking environments.

My customer service number outside office hours gets diverted to my mobile at my expense and trust me, I'm not approaching Lord Sugar levels any time soon!

Ebay have recently stepped up their own customer service, ten years late, but they have finally learnt that employing people who answer questions is useful, and who knows, one day soon they may employ people who even give the right answers ALL the time.

Can you remember a better or worse service in days gone by?

Which automated services are better and quicker than using a human?

We've got someone in your area

No one likes cold callers, or at least I've never met anyone who does. I've learnt a way of getting some fun out of them as long as they get me at the right time. I should point out that I have added our number to never be called by cold callers but they always manage to find me.

Busby, the first cold caller

The worst are the automated ones, the most recent one asked me my name and then told me to press one if it was me, when I did the phone started to ring and then a human answered asking me my reference number, I pointed out that as they had called me I would have expected them to know the reference number, sheesh.

In the now forgotten soap Brookside there was a character who liked to wind up telesales people, putting them on hold was the main way and seeing how long they stay on the phone. I appreciate some people have a job to do but if that job involves being deceitful or trying to mislead someone into something they don't want then expect me to try and waste your time a bit.

A recent call informed me that they could save me money by having solar panels fitted on our property, the pleasant young lady informed me that they "were calling every home in the country", I asked if they would be taking on more staff as that would take them a long time, "just a minute" she replied "I'll put you on to my supervisor", I guess some questions are just too tough.

There's also a frequent caller that tells me that they would like to fit windows and doors free of charge in our property and that they have someone in our area, when I asked which area, the reply tends to be "your area", they don't actually know where I live.

I really don't understand the necessity of this type of selling, I'm not convinced it ever works, obviously they must have some success or they wouldn't keep doing it, but it seems to encourage dishonesty and even if I did want double glazing I wouldn't hang around waiting for a phone call, I'd check the companies available out and see what was on offer.

Despite having been selling stuff most of my adult life I've never really considered myself as a salesman, I prefer to let the items sell themselves, if enough people can see something and they still don't want it, I'm not going to push them into it. When I've watched the TV series The Apprentice, some of the selling techniques leave a lot to be desired, it's all about the sale, not the after sale or even the next sale, when the sale is done then they think that's it. I like to think that the sale is the beginning of a relationship, that the customer will be happy with the product (and if not be freely able to let me know and I'll sort it for them) and the price and want to buy from me again, if they don't I consider it a failure. I don't have a script to read from, I won't bend the truth and unless you show an interest in what I'm selling I won't even bother you, I doubt I'll even have anyone in your area!

I want my tweeting money back

One of the better side effects of the rise of the internet has been an increased awareness of customer service (I'm not quite sure that as a whole customer service itself has yet greatly improved).

Hoteliers have to up their customer service so their Tripadvisor ratings stay high. Zappos in the US has risen to the top simply by offering a policy where customers can try at home any shoes and return the ones they don't like free of charge. Love it or hate it one of the reasons Ebay took off so well was down to its feedback system, yet even that needed adjusting to fit with the changing demands of the consumer. Even in our supermarkets, the cashiers no longer throw carrier bags at you and leave you to get on with it, they ask you if you need any help. There are magazines that regularly survey readers and post their findings, banks, utility companies, shops, etc now know where they fit with their competitors regarding resolving problems and general customer service, the public can then decide which companies to use.

There are occasions though when no amount of phone calls, emails, letters will get you anywhere with a complaint. On a few occasions this has happened I managed to find a way of getting help and quick, via Twitter. It isn't even always the case that you have to contact the company direct, just a mention of them gets their attention. A bad word on Twitter can linger and the companies want to sort it out. The first time I did this was with a large multiple high street electrical retailer, I had a faulty item that had been exchanged three times, I was told all I could do was keep exchanging for the same product, there was no other way forward, I tried everything, even contacting Trading Standards who couldn't help, in desperation I tweeted about it, within a few minutes I had a tweet back asking for my contact details, within a few more minutes I had a call from the CEO's office offering me a choice of products in any store. The Twitter departments of  a lot of companies are quite high up in the organisation, where a phone call gets through to a low ranking member of staff, they need their Twitter to be someone well briefed. A badly answered phone call will rarely end up in the newspapers, a tweet can be viewed by millions in minutes so the top companies are keen to have a good, clean amd helpful Twitter presence.

I'm still working on my balance between Facebook and Twitter and now this blog, our Facebook page is linked to Twitter and this blog posts direct to Twitter (come on now, keep up!). I occasionally add stuff to Twitter and other stuff to Facebook, I'm working on some useful promotions and other items to make Twitter and Facebook more useful and interesting than just being adverts for stock, I like to think that I'm usually on top of customer service, so hopefully no one will be wanting to contact me on Twitter. Our phone number is on most things now too, just one word of advice, if you do have a problem and call, stop speaking long enough for me to get a word in, especially if I'm not the seller you wanted after all!