Drop Ship

[macdebbie]

I am considering using 3D Cart for a my start-up e-commerce business.

It seems like a good platform to start and grow with.

My biggest priority is to have a cart that is capable of handling drop-shipping well. My entire business is drop-ship, so this is critical.

I will have @ 4-5 manufacturers that I use, and a single order could well be split between all of them.

Would like comments on how 3D Cart handles drop-shipping and what problems/deficiencies people have run into.

Is it necessary to purchase something like Stone Edge to make this work? I really would like one solution if possible.

[GonzaloGil]

Hello,
3dCart can handle these types of scenarios pretty well. The system can be setup to even charge shipping from multiple distributors, ie, if you have an order with 2 items, 1 from a drop shipper in Florida, and one from a drop shipper in California, it will calculate the shipping cost of each one and provide 1 shipping quote to the customer.

You can also have it automatically email the distributors once the order is placed (and only the item that they handle will display).

Stone Edge is great for managing the orders, I don't think you'll need it to handle this specific scenario, however, as you get more orders, you will need a software to manage them, and while 3dCart is great at taking orders, Stone Edge shines when it comes to managing all the orders, specially when you have multiple store fronts, or also need to handle point of sale orders.

[lml]

macdebbie,

We drop ship all our products.

3DCart won't allow you to approve / peruse all your orders...prior to sending the order to your manufacturer/distributor without a major runaround (click this, new page, click that, unclick this, new page, unclick that).

However, I have been assured by 3DCart that this will be in their next release.

#1 on the hit parade for us on the upcoming release.

Despite that...3DCart is an awesome product. 100% uptime last month. :D

[macdebbie]

Drop Ship Problem

That is not good. Pretty basic stuff. I am very surprised that 3D does not do this. I am also looking at CC. Will have to circle back and see if they have the same limitations.

macdebbie,

We drop ship all our products.

3DCart won't allow you to approve / peruse all your orders...prior to sending the order to your manufacturer/distributor without a major runaround (click this, new page, click that, unclick this, new page, unclick that).

However, I have been assured by 3DCart that this will be in their next release.

#1 on the hit parade for us on the upcoming release.

Despite that...3DCart is an awesome product. 100% uptime last month. :D

[GonzaloGil]

The option to email the distributor when the order is placed is not a requirement. You can turn this off, then manually email each distributor if you wish. We are working on a third option that is semi-automatic, that is, based on the order status it will email the distributor, but this is not yet part of the software.

[macdebbie]

Drop Ship - Auto?

I'm looking for an automatic (no intervention by me) notification to my manufacturers that an order has come through. Is that possible?

That way if I am out on the road marketing, and an order comes through, it gets to the manufacturer as soon as it is placed rather than it having to wait until I return to the office.

On the flip side, I would like something available to my manufacturers so that they could then notify me (and the client) that the product has shipped and provide a tracking #.

The option to email the distributor when the order is placed is not a requirement. You can turn this off, then manually email each distributor if you wish. We are working on a third option that is semi-automatic, that is, based on the order status it will email the distributor, but this is not yet part of the software.

[onering]

Your post caught my attention. Are you currently operating in this manner - i.e. allowing orders to pass through your ecommerce site, directly to your suppliers? If you are currently doing this, how do you deal with potential fraud orders?

Speaking for myself only, I would never allow an order to be processed by a third party without one of us checking the validity of the order first. We do allow the buyer to ship to an address that is different from the billing address, but even if we stop this practice, it still would not eliminate the risk of fraud.

[Mark]

onering, just curious what mechanism you use for fraud prevention? Would that still not work for drop ship orders?

[onering]

There is no ONE mechanism that we use to prevent fraud. We have to use numerous methods to try to identify fraud orders before shipping them out. If anyone has a bulletproof method to do this, please let us know what it is.

We use a combination of Maxmind, Whitepages, Intellus, People finders, Yahoo People Search, and several others.

I feel like I could write a book on this subject at this point. The methods being used to commit fraud are becoming much more clever and diabolical since we started this back in '03. Now there is much organized fraud on the web, in particular these [email protected] reshipping scams.

We have to spend time verifying at least half of our orders, sometimes acting like a PI to figure out if the person ordering is really the card holder. This is why I would never blindly have our orders sent to a third party for processing before a thorough review.

There are two ways in which the merchant will be liable for processing a fraud order: (1) allowing different billing and shipping addresses and (2) The AVS score is not perfect (YYYM). If an order is processed and either of these two statements are true, then the merchant bears responsibility in the case of fraud.

For us, we do allow orders to be shipped to a different address from the billing address. This is actually a major part of our business (close to 50%). The AVS scores are a whole different issue. Years ago when we started online, it seemed like no orders got through without proper AVS scores. Now, the banks allow everything through. We even get orders with NNNN scores now! I have inquired in the past to our merchant account provider about the possibility of refusing transactions without proper AVS. We were told that this isn't possible since the AVS is generated by the card issuing bank. This has been a major headache in identifying fraud orders.

[Mark]

Yes, we don't use the immediate drop-ship notification either for the same reason. We need to review orders prior to sending the email order notification to the dropshippers. If even to just cleanup the address errors and spelling/whatnot. Also, high dollar orders definately get more scrutiny. We never really figured out a efficient method to do so. 3dcart offered some workarounds and ideas, but, we never got it to work very well. So, we still manually review all orders and manually send an order to the dropshipper.

[ecommhub]

I am considering using 3D Cart for a my start-up e-commerce business.

It seems like a good platform to start and grow with.

My biggest priority is to have a cart that is capable of handling drop-shipping well. My entire business is drop-ship, so this is critical.

I will have @ 4-5 manufacturers that I use, and a single order could well be split between all of them.

Would like comments on how 3D Cart handles drop-shipping and what problems/deficiencies people have run into.

Is it necessary to purchase something like Stone Edge to make this work? I really would like one solution if possible.

We're currently developing a drop-shipping app for 3DCart called eCommHub. It handles multiple distributors just as you described, so you can split an order's line items between distributors. Also, if you have the same products available from multiple distributors, you can set a preferred distributor or automatically determine which distributor has the lowest price.

Stone Edge is a solid order management system; however, it is not designed specifically for drop-shippers. It is also a Microsoft Access-based program that must be installed on a compatible computer. On the other hand, eCommHub is a web-based application, so you can access it from multiple computers without paying for separate licenses. We also plan to develop an iPhone app.

Stone Edge is actually quite pricey. I just checked their website and prices start at $2,000, with additional costs for add-on features. eCommHub's pricing will be much more competitive, probably a low monthly fee that is appropriate for drop-shippers that don't want to pay for extra features they don't need.

I'm looking for an automatic (no intervention by me) notification to my manufacturers that an order has come through. Is that possible?

Yes, one of the best features of eCommHub is its ability to automate order processing. This can be as simple as sending an email to your distributor, to as advanced as automatically placing the order through your distributor's website. Then, eCommHub can parse the shipment notifications sent from your distributors to automatically mark orders as shipped and append the tracking number.

We are planning to launch eCommHub this summer and are looking for feedback and beta-testers right now. We currently support Magento and Shopify, but we would like to support 3DCart early on if there's enough interest.

Please visit http://ecommhub.com for a more in-depth overview of eCommHub and take the survey if you'd like us to support 3DCart for the release this summer. I'll also be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks,

Kurt H.
eCommHub

[2old4this]

I do a lot of drop shipping too and here are my current issues with 3dcart's shipping:
1. order a free shipping item along with a paid shipping item, and the free shipping is stripped. That free ship item is now charged which can add up to HUGE shipping charges.
2. If one item should go first class USPS, but another item in the same order is Priority, they both are charged priority. Again, HUGE shipping charges.
3. You can't set flat rate shipping for individual items. I have a lot of items which should be a flat $10 or $8 or whatever, but no can do. Added complexity.
4. You can't opt out of international shipping on an individual item.
5. You can't set free shipping for the lower 48 US only.

Those are the biggies. I've had to issue many, many refunds and have lost sales due to the crazy high shipping charges that come up due to these.

[JustPoppin]

I do a lot of drop shipping too and here are my current issues with 3dcart's shipping:
1. order a free shipping item along with a paid shipping item, and the free shipping is stripped. That free ship item is now charged which can add up to HUGE shipping charges.
2. If one item should go first class USPS, but another item in the same order is Priority, they both are charged priority. Again, HUGE shipping charges.
3. You can't set flat rate shipping for individual items. I have a lot of items which should be a flat $10 or $8 or whatever, but no can do. Added complexity.
4. You can't opt out of international shipping on an individual item.
5. You can't set free shipping for the lower 48 US only.

Those are the biggies. I've had to issue many, many refunds and have lost sales due to the crazy high shipping charges that come up due to these.

@2old4this - you hit the nail on the head (5 times) for us.

Also, you can't offer a free shipping promotion on specific items - it will apply free shipping to the whole order AND if you have an entry in the product page "shipping" field, THAT amount will still be charged, even though it's a free shipping promotion.

[JustPoppin]

Hello,
3dCart can handle these types of scenarios pretty well. The system can be setup to even charge shipping from multiple distributors, ie, if you have an order with 2 items, 1 from a drop shipper in Florida, and one from a drop shipper in California, it will calculate the shipping cost of each one and provide 1 shipping quote to the customer.

Gonzalo, can you please explain what you mean a bit more? For instance, I understand that there can only be one shipping method and they can't be combined - so if I my Florida distributor ships Fedex and the California distributor ships UPS, that's not going to work. 3dcart won't calculate the appropriate shipping for each product and then add them and provide 1 shipping quote. The customer is going to see several different shipping quotes, none of which will make sense (as far as I can tell).

I don't have control over the shipping method choices of a supplier - I have to deal with what they use.

So instead of being able to use calculated shipping for each of those suppliers, I have to come up with a flat rate shipping cost to enter into the product page for each of their items (instead of just entering their weight), whether they ship to the next zone or a zone across the country.

Coming up with a compromise flat shipping cost for each of a supplier's (tens, hundreds, thousands???) products is a huge, unpleasant, and costly effort that will no doubt end up costing me - either by charging too little or by quoting too much and chasing the customer away.

Thanks,
B

[Luxlife]

Gonzalo, can you please explain what you mean a bit more? For instance, I understand that there can only be one shipping method and they can't be combined - so if I my Florida distributor ships Fedex and the California distributor ships UPS, that's not going to work. 3dcart won't calculate the appropriate shipping for each product and then add them and provide 1 shipping quote. The customer is going to see several different shipping quotes, none of which will make sense (as far as I can tell).

I don't have control over the shipping method choices of a supplier - I have to deal with what they use. B

We find the rate difference between FedEx and UPS is so insubstantial that we often switch regardless of the one chosen by the customer. We state in our terms of service that we will switch between carriers as long as the service is similar. We ship the overwhelming majority of orders ourselves, at least 70%. For the orders that drop ship, we tell our suppliers to use their carrier of choice and send us the tracking number. We manually change the carrier and send out the tracking as usual. We have never had a customer complain about this.

Has anyone had a substantial negative response from customers wanting one carrier over the other? Or is there an assumption that shipping by another carrier than the one selected at time of order will cause customer complaints?