I have had a store with this company for several months, and use my own registered domain name.in all fairness, I gave it the best shot that I could, and went all out with every available tool and resource I could utilize. I used PPC's, search engine submissions, web traffic submitters, classifieds, Google Adwords, and several other resources.
I spent hours every week changing around products, taking out old and obsolete items, changing around the hot buys & front page items. I did banner exchanges, link exchanges, hard coding enhancements like a real time counter for traffic.
The first problem that I ran into was when I signed up for the email service. I was led to believe that I would receive all email that came to my site via server responders. When I tested it, I got no response returns. For over 3 months I complained with email after email, with no response, other than my email service was working properly.
By chance, I had ordered several items by credit card, and when my bill came in, the phone number for them was on it. After calling and complaining again to a live person, I was told to send an email to the tech dept and put her name in the subject line. Still no luck. Then, a few weeks ago, I finally got a response. The email program is all forwarded to UB!
THAT is VERY suspicious, to say the least! I was told that if I wanted them to build a page in my site to direct all email to me, they would do it. But, well, you guessed it. No response!
In all fairness, I have to say that I have been impressed with the shipping. Even over the Christmas holidays, everything was delivered in less than a weeks time. Otherwise, it normally takes only 3 days from order to recipt of merchandise. And everything is blind shipped, which means that packages come with my company name on them.
But shipping is another issue. You are limited to THEIR choice of shippers, and that's something that many customers want control over. Also, when you ship to a business address, the cost is less than to ship to a residential address. But UB charges a "flat" rate, no matter if it's shipped by FedEx, UPS or USPS, residential or business.
With all the work, time, effort, money that I have invested in this, it has not provided me with one single sale, other than what I have purchased myself. I sell on several auction sites, and cut my prices down to just a few cents, and still cannot get any interest. SOme things, like videos for example. Their cost is normally $12 to $15, for videos that have been out over 2 years. No one is going to pay more than $10 for an older DVD that they can easily get at any Wal-Mart for less than $10, much less $15.
The only thing that I have saved with this company is for the items that I have purchased personally.
So, if this all looks good to you and you are considering signing up, I strongly advise you to consider your options. As a web based business, you will fail miserably. If you are just looking for a place to buy your own merchandise, you can save some money, depending what you get, but not a lot. Take the advice from what you read here, and all the others who have entered complaints. Save your money and invest in a real business.
Whatever you decide to invest in or do, best of luck in your endeavors.
0 comments