This is my experience so far with SMC (speacialty merchandise corporation. About 4 months ago I purchased one of their "deluxe" websites (paid about $2,800 dollars). I was excited about the prospect. Then bought $1,000 dollars in gift cards to go. Purchased a search engine package for about $400. Have Purchased E-merchant capability (about $200.00). Have racked up about $400.00 in sevice fees.
The customer service was OK, but they hired an new team of staff for the Holidays which are hardly knowledgable about questions I ask. They all give answers that conflict with their co-workers answers the follwing day. All in all I would give them a 7 for niceness and "help".
The website layouts are total garbage. There are only a FEW that are even pleasing to the eye and content friendly. The site manager is OK, but when you buy the "search engine package" they command control of a few of YOUR PAGES. They tell you that it is for "your own good" as many have messed up their site, so SMC wants to play Big Brother with certain pages.
My website, when coupled with the merchant account/shopping cart is full of errors (about 150 purchasing errors in 1 month) To be fair, about 30% of these errors are from customers. Oddly though for 150 errors I have ZERO sales. The logic doesnt add up, but I could be paranoid.
The site itself has many errors when run through a CODE VALIDATION program for HTML or other source. There are about well over 700 errors on the source code for the site currently.
Their "search engine package" is good for yahoo and some other engines, but TOTAL RIP OFF GARBAGE for GOOGLE. Google will NOT index the websites properly, additionally sitemapping for google is impossible with the site as is. They have also lied about when they UPDATE the websites to search engines or how they do it. When you call them out on lies, they give you some mantra that doesnt add up.
TO be fair about all this, I have not tried to sell SMC products to LIVE people, swap meets, flea markets, etc., so I cannot say that SMC doesnt "work". All I can talk about is the websites.
Also, I can only tell you that I have tried so far with all my heart to make this a success on the NEt. I have studied countless hours on advertising/marketing/search engines, content, and from what I know and continue to find out, is that SMC is not INTERNET FRIENDLY or COMPLIANT.
Do the math for how much I have spent already. THOUSANDS of dollars. Maybe its me, maybe not. What I do know is that it is 4 months later and guess how many sales I have made after spending THOUSANDS? NONE. Zero. NADA.
I will keep trying for a while, but Im getting tired of the errors with the search engine lies, granted they NEVER promised search engine results, but man do they rip you off with it. GOOGLE is how much of the search engine market again? And their site doesnt even allow for proper searching cuz its filled full of script errors and BS. Be advised.
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