We try to provide the best customer service that we can and I think we are doing pretty well so far. There are all kinds of situations that come up and it’s important to make the best decision for the customer and your business. My small business here relies on many others because they provide me with other items I need. I try to do some purchases local or at least in this area. But some local people can be unreasonable and kill off any potential relationship. I want to grow and I want the people I support to grow. I really wish I could find all of the “good guys” out there so we could combine and take over. Push away the greedy people and just have all of us make a reasonable living from our work and give back to people that need it.
The whole point to all of this is a recent experience we had when repairing a tennis ball machine charger. Strange piece of equipment, but it has a circuit board with bad parts and soldering new ones on is what we like to do. I started searching for the “rectifiers” and found them on a website. I contacted that company and my boss (for the computer shop I also work at) thought he found the right people to contact for the whole unit. Both companies were very friendly and their service was honestly shocking. I had contacted Allied Electronics for the rectifiers. I asked a bunch of questions that they couldn’t answer but they tried. When I asked if they had a minimum order, I was disappointed to find it was $25. The items I needed were only 17cents each and I really only needed 4 of them. I was pleasantly shocked when the gentleman that I was speaking with said he would send a “free sample” to me. In the meantime my boss made several calls trying to track down the entire unit. Finally after about 3 calls he found someone that said he had it and what the heck he would send it out for free. Wow, two free shipments in one day? Let’s see what happens. The “whole unit” came in first and was not the right item, I had a feeling that would happen. So we waited another day I think and I received the rectifiers. So I replaced the bad ones and everything looks good for that charger, I think I fixed it?
The whole reason for this story is to show that there are a lot of great companies out there that are willing to help you and it was very refreshing to me that I found one. I hope to be able to give them a few orders in the future but the nature of my repairs makes that doubtful. Normally I just need a few little things that are cheap and customers can’t wait a few weeks while I try to build an order up. These types of repairs do not come around very often either. The last similar situation I had was several months ago and it was a small chip on the board of an LCD monitor that had blown up. Luckily I was able to identify it and replacement did fix the monitor. If you are in need of some electronic components, I highly recommend Allied Electronics!
Generally we have seen very few shipping problems. A few times a year though something happens and at times it can be challenging to deal with. The second problem I will talk about though is just something that is honestly silly that I caused myself.
We are not big and I’ve told you before there is not much room for profit with our everyday low prices. If I make a mistake, I end up paying for it!! When something bad happens many things go through my head. I of course want to and know that I have to do the right thing but the entire process of handling the problem can sometimes be wrong. I ask myself what would a “big” company do? That usually doesn’t get me anywhere because with a good company that makes a lot of money they don’t mind a small loss on one mistake. Honestly with the prices I’ve seen from my connections to manufacturers I see how much markup there really is out there! Then of course I also see the high prices that some greedy manufacturers try to push on me. Since I don’t have buying power they will then not give me huge discounts like they do for the big guys.
Problem #1: This just happened to me on Monday. I shipped an order of only motherboard standoffs late last week. The shipping was only $1.41. The customer sent me an irate email demanding $3.54 because postage was due. I was confused and mad. I don’t like it when customers are angry but I can help settle them down a bit. I told him that I needed a picture of the envelope and that I would get to the bottom of this problem. I called Stamps.com that told me to call USPS and then was told to stop down to the local office to fill out a form. With the picture though I found out what the problem was. Some how there was a Priority Mail sticker on the package?? I know I didn’t put it on and was afraid I would have a fight with the post office the next day. I filled out the form, showed them the picture, and was surprised to just be handed the money. Evidently they know my packages and never have problems with them so they didn’t want to argue. So I PayPal’d the money and the customer was happy with our good customer service.
Problem #2: This started because of the visit to the post office. I went ahead and bought a book of stamps because I occasionally do mail letters. I had an order with me and I threw the book of stamps in the box. Got to work early and finished packing it up and it was ready for my mailman. After work I started looking for my stamps?? Where were they? I couldn’t find them, oh man are they in the box? So I wasted that customers time and send him an email. He was very nice and said we would figure it out when he receives the package. Well of course, I checked my laptop bag this morning after coming into work…..there they are!! Oh jeez! So I emailed the customer back and told him I was sorry for wasting his time and to enjoy the new products he purchased from me.
Luckily my stories aren’t ones of lost, stolen, or damaged packages. They can be ugly and hard to deal with. The second story really wasn’t anything bad, just a good example of me being a ding dong at times.
Finally I am a bit disappointed that I have no deliveries for Pittsburgh on Friday. I was really hoping to have to drop of an order or two. However I did end up finding a keyboard that I need for a repair at the shop, it is in Pittsburgh!! So I contacted them and will be picking it up from them on Friday! So we saved about $5 on shipping and I’ll get to say HI to someone. At least it’s something. We still have one more day though, so maybe I’ll get lucky and get an order to deliver? I think next time I’m going to have to advertise it on the site and talk about it more. Now I just have to hope to get the money for the Steelers game tickets and hope for some Winter Classic tickets!! Hope you enjoyed my stories, have a good day!
We love saving money and really enjoy passing savings on to you. Honestly since I was a young lad I have always loved pens. Yeah, I’m strange. Over the years we have found good deals on items while shopping for school supplies for our boys. I can’t pass up the deals so I’ve been a little silly and bought too much! I generally help others out such as my brother and family friends with their kids supplies. Now please understand that the listed items on the site are not years old, it is possible for them to dry up over time and we would not sell that to you. All the new items have only been on hand for a few months.
The point of this new area is not really to create more revenue and you will see that with the prices. I just want to pass on some great deals to you and at least cover the payment processing fees. So if you or your office is in need of some supplies you can pick some up cheap along with our great prices on computer hardware. If these items sell then we will gladly continue to pick up great deals and pass them on to you. Please check out the new area here:
Burrows Solutions Office Supplies
Also I hope some of you from Pittsburgh visit the site this week! The special promo starts now and I hope to receive some orders that need delivered! You only have until Thursday night to place your order and have it personally delivered by me on Friday afternoon!
First the possible security issue. It is not a good idea to announce a vacation on the Internet because then people may try to break into your house! I have that covered though because I have a friend watching my house and dogs, and he owns a few guns!!
The family and I are planning a quick mini-vacation to Pittsburgh the weekend of the 28th. The Penguins have an open house for the new arena and we want to go and check it out. We are going to leave Friday morning, check out some stuff on Friday, go to the arena almost all day Saturday, and then head home that night. I had an interesting idea though. I’ve received a few emails in the past from UBCD4Win users that told me to stop by if I ever made it to Pittsburgh. That got the gears grinding and here is what came out.
When and what does this free “personal” shipping mean? Between the 23rd and 26th, if you place an order and live in the surrounding Pittsburgh area then I will personally deliver it to you Friday afternoon! Just place your order and then email me. I will refund you the shipping costs and setup a time to deliver your order on Friday afternoon!
Now keep in mind that delivery times will be a bit limited. I am bringing my family and we will want to go check out some other stuff on Friday but I think I can organize my time well enough for this to work. I mean, I have to go to “frick park” and have a picture taken of me next to the sign so we officially have a picture of “frick and frack”!!
This may sound a little crazy and it probably is but it sounds like fun too!! Most of you probably don’t see an appeal to this but some “nerds” out there may appreciate meeting the creator of UBCD4Win? If you work at or own a shop in the area, shoot me an email and I’ll stop by to say HI and check it out. No order required, just a love for UBCD4Win!! Let me know what you think and I hope to receive at least one order in the next 2 weeks to personally deliver.
Finally, please feel free to still place orders that weekend. We will only be gone from Friday morning until Saturday night. So any orders will be taken care of Sunday and then shipped out first thing Monday morning. Thank you!
I will honestly say I am having quite a bit of fun with all of this! Maybe it is because I continue to get good news? This is hard work but finding you low prices is fun also.
Good things have been happening every week for the past couple of months. Our stock of Azio products are in and look really good, now we just need to sell some of it. UPS shipping rates are looking pretty good and are allowing us to save more and allow us to pass on additional savings to you. I have been talking with a few other manufacturers and don’t want to say too much until the deals are done. I need to do more research on the pricing to see if this can be a win-win for all of us.
Evidently we are doing something right because my most recent request for some credit at our bank has been approved. No more spending my mortgage payment because I found a good deal and then wondering if we will sell enough to get it paid on time. Now I will just have to make sure and buy the right stuff so we can pay the cc off every month. If we don’t then paying interest will pretty much kill any opportunity to make money from our sales.
These are exciting times and I think it can only continue to get better. Please continue to visit the site and enjoy our every day low prices. If there is something you want and don’t see it on the site, please take the time to shoot us an email. We will check into the item and see if we can get you a lower price for it. Have a good weekend everyone!
I missed an error on some recent UBCD4Win discs we have shipped and now people are having problems. I deeply apologize for the mistake and will do whatever you want me to in order to repair this situation. The fix is easy but you will still have a slightly faulty disc. If you have this error and want a new disc, please just contact us and we will send a fixed one out to you.
The problem occurred because I evidently forgot to go through all the Quality Checks I normally do when I compile a new version. There are no security problems or any other issues with the discs, just simply a HashCheck error message. The message occurs when it checks to make sure all files have been extracted from our installer. This measure is taken because sometimes AV or AS software will delete “riskware” files from UBCD4Win. If the missing files weren’t reported and you went to build you couldn’t because there would be missing file errors from our Builder. The problem here is a missing file that is supposed to be there but it is not. When these missing file errors occur our HashCheck software does not extract our UBCD4WinBuilder.exe file. So really you are missing two files but if you do not plan on using SpyBot then you don’t need to worry about that file.
The easy fix is to download UBCD4WinBuilder.exe from here. Take the file and save it to the folder where you extracted UBCD4Win. You should be set then, just run the builder and compile your UBCD4Win disc. If you plan on using SpyBot, then you will have to take the “advcheck.dll” file from a SpyBot installation you have and put it into the “C:\UBCD4Win\plugin\AntiSpyware\SpyBot\files” folder.
I again apologize for the problem and will do whatever it takes to keep you satisfied with your order. If you do not want to go through the steps above and just want a replacement disc, then please email us with your order number and we will get a disc shipped out right away. You can find our contact information here.
In an effort to be less bothersome to real customers, we had the “email to a friend” option open to everyone. The past setting allowed someone without an account at our store to email a friend the link to an item. We weighed the pros and cons over a year ago and until now never had a problem.
Let me be clear that we have not received any complaints about this “feature” and am only taking action now because it was being exploited this morning. None of our customers are affected and really I don’t think many people have been affected? We have to worry now though because if the spammers were lucky and sent out any emails to real addresses then they will probably be tagged as spam and we will have a mess to cleanup with that.
We keep a close eye on things and are glad we caught this early. If anyone was sent a “goofy” email we apologize. We have changed the setting so this will never happen again. The only thing we have to worry about is spammers getting smart enough to figure out how to fill out our registration form and create an account. That is quite a process so I don’t think they will put that much effort into trying to send out a few spam messages?
It took them several days to cash the check but at least they contacted me pretty promptly. Friday they had payment and yesterday I received a few emails from the Better Business Bureau. I am very happy that the online setup is done and they sent me the logo to put on the site. So now at the bottom of we are sporting a BBB graphic. To help the area not look too empty I found a “verified” logo from PayPal that we can use. Click either of the logos and you will go to their site and they will give you information about us. I didn’t realize until today that I’ve had that PayPal account for over 7 years now!
So now we have some very reliable and credible certificates, security, and accreditation on the site. I really hope it helps us gain more orders.
Finally I am on the hunt for more logos to put down there. I’ve been thinking about getting a Reseller Reviews one but don’t think the $29 a month is a good investment? They do have some decent perks that would almost make it worth it but I don’t know how much it will actually help us? If you have any ideas we would love to hear them. Thanks for reading and please visit the store for some awesome new deals we just got in over the weekend.
I generally like to try to work with people and get deals. Sometimes though it takes me being a pain in the ass and complaining a lot. Not until late last week did I realize that UPS actually cares a little bit and they provide a sales support representative.
With us (Burrows Solutions) being small, having limited funds, and low sales volume we really don’t have much going for us. Or at least I’ve been under that assumption? Like I’ve blogged before we sometimes find manufacturers that are actually willing to work with us even with our low volume and still give us decent pricing so we can compete. It appears that in some situations you just need to find the right person to talk to.
I was very excited a couple of days ago when we found that Azio was willing to work with us. Now to help with that news we have a pretty good deal worked out with UPS. I had my initial meeting last week and during today’s meeting I signed a contract with them. Our rates are supposed to be effective on Monday but it will probably take a few days for the pricing to appear on the site.
I hope you are all enjoying the ability to watch our fun journey. This is all quite interesting and I know at least a few people enjoy the behind the scene stuff. I am pretty excited about this and sure that these new low rates should help us grow even more. Please keep in mind also that when we process orders we generally watch the shipping costs and have been known to charge people less or issue partial refunds because the shipping rate is lower than what our website quoted them. I can’t guarantee it for all orders but starting Monday with our new rates we should be able to be very competitive. We have the 24″ Acer LCDs on sale again and we have limited quantity of them. Our cart won’t quote the right rate but when we process the shipping we will gladly process a partial refund. So if you are interested in the 24″ monitor I can almost guarantee you about $5 additional savings when we ship them on Monday. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us. Thank you!!
I think one of the most fun parts of having an online store is dealing directly with the manufacturer. You still might not get the lowest possible price but you receive pricing that can compete with the big boys (NewEgg, Tiger Direct, etc.). A lot of companies do not want to deal with us. We do not have the volume to place a $2000 order every month so the company doesn’t make much money from us. Sure I can order from MA Labs, InfoTel, ASI, D&H, Tech Data, or any other the other big distributors but of course they have mark up as well. Sometimes though they can actually have a lower price because they buy in such big volume. So it is a struggle to really find the best prices for you. It is worth it though.
We have used a few Azio products in the past few years and have been happy with their quality. They really seem to make good quality components and price them very affordably. I contacted them last week and am happy to say that we are now a partner with Azio. We have not placed an order yet because we are still trying to figure out what you want to buy. Soon though we will be placing that order and begin listing the items on our site. The competition has some pretty good prices on these items but I am confident that we can provide a slightly lower price and much more reasonable shipping costs.
So please if you have the time, shoot us an email or comment on Azio products you would purchase from us. Currently we are looking at the PCI NIC, USB 3.0 hard drive docking station, PCIe USB 3.0 card, their 5, 8, and 16 port switches, Internal flash card reader, and some PCI wireless N adapters.
