Forum Moderators: buckworks
I came across several well-ranked sites with the product I sought, but, not a mention of contact details. Or there were incomplete or inacurate contact details on others.
There's always the chance they were scammers after credit card details, of course.
My impression was that several were genuine online etailers. The whois seemed good, and the site's history seemed good, too. But, of course, many people don't have any knowledge of such tools, and why should they need to to!
Are they afraid of customer contact? Why hide behind the virtual anonymity?
I really cannot think of any genuine reasons to hide their contacts details.
I can think of a few why they might want to hide their details:-
These days, I just won't make online purchases from ecommerce sites obfuscating their contact details.
Don't be afraid, become customer-friendly!
I can think of one other reason that I've come across personally. A company that is having considerable success in a particular market might spin off one or more copycat companies to attack different price points or to increase share of the SERPs.
Its remarkably cheap to set up a new "company" on the internet, but not so much in the B&M world. Setting up a fake address is too expensive. Using the same address, or even one in the same city, might tip off the competition (or even the savvy consumer). So, they just make it really hard to get any address information at all.
The easy orders come through online. Hiring someone to staff the phone all day or sit in a showroom is very expensive for those few orders that come through this way. Most are inquiries or looky-loos.
You say they will be repeat buyers if they do buy, tell their friends etc. but it's speculation and focusing on the ones that do. There are just as many that don't return.
[edited by: MrHard at 6:37 pm (utc) on May 13, 2009]
They don't want to be bothered.
That was his approach, he would ignore emails that needed to be ignored and respond to one he wanted to respond to.
I find that people who run operations out of their home tend to do this
also a quick add running a business out of your home then opens the door to attach all your personal properity to a lawsuit doesn't matter if it is an LLC Inc or anything else.
# Their service is bad and they don't want you to chase them up.
Well what amazes me is high volume low cost payment providers like SWREG.org who do not have any customer service phone numbers.
They have improved a lot but for a public company still it is a mistake and a way to get your chargebacks up not to give a service phone number.
Sure get the customer to go through one hoop, but not more than that before they see a phone number.
Otherwise they will decide it's easier to call up theyr bank and negotiate the customer service menu there to get a chargeback -- than open a support ticket or email to you.
Your nuts to buy off a site that you can't contact or get an address on.
Definitely lots of nuts in the world- Amazon and Google are raking in the bucks.
True enough but they have the advantage of people mostly not wanting to chargeback because then they have in their mind never being able to buy from Amazon again.. which makes people think twice.
This is not something that goes through the mind of people buying from a payment processing site though. Not even Paypal..
There's no reason not to have that if phone hours can be established, except that affiliates might balk; but the answer to that is to have phone tracking.
I personally always look before I buy anything that there is contact info on the site. As for Amazon and Google, their corporate addresses are public. Not so with these online "businesses" that have no contact info and block their whois info.
I do not believe that people need to hide info on whos for security reasons because they have a home biz. If they want, they can use a PO box. I have used my real home address in whois and on my site for years, no evil eye.
-Gs
True enough but they have the advantage of people mostly not wanting to chargeback because then they have in their mind never being able to buy from Amazon again.. which makes people think twice.
Just out of curiosity: I understand chargeback is just "get my money back" from the credit card company, right? Can't they simply send the stuff back to amazon and get a refund? That's how it's working in germany, allthough most stuff works without credit cards (you cannot cause too much trouble over here by knowing someones bank account, different system).
On topic: In germany, you're required to have a full contact address, a person who's responsible, phone and email and/or fax. Since I'm used to that, I probably wouldn't buy from someone I cannot get ahold of without help from credit card companies.
If I don't see an address then I don't buy.
My question would you use a travel website with no contact details even if the direct relationship is between you and the accommodation provider?
On a travel website - categorically no.
Regarding disclosure requirements, see [webmasterworld.com...]
This might not be much of a concern in the US, where credit cards dominate online payment and buyers can simply issue a chargeback. But where I live and in many other European countries bank-transfer is the dominant payment option for purchases in the internet. And since you can't simply reverse those, you need to know with whom you are dealing.
But even if I pay with credit card - which I seldom do - I want to know the company I trust with my credit card details.
- Don't want to be bothered with phone calls
- Don't want to let them know I work out of my garage
- Paranoia works both sides of the fence, don't want some nutjob turning up at my door
I think overall it essentially comes from greed and selfishness: I want to make money on the Internet but don't want to commit myself in such a way that I can be held accountable. These are also the same companies who try to host on free services and get any work done with free software and lowball providers.
In any case they don't understand the value of building user trust.
Owners could be in any country in the world and chances are they are scammers.My statment may have been a little harsh and I retract it. I should have said there was a possibility they could be scammers enough so I won't purchase from one.
I wonder how they are finding out this
as soon as they realise we're not US, mostly the sale fails.
I have purchased from other countries to me that really isn't an issue.
I wonder if your company would put up "Been in business for 10 years selling all over the world ect and some customer comments from different countries if this would have a more soothing effect on the customer on your contact page. From your post it seems the information is available but hidden and or very hard to find.
I am sure you have some type of shipping time deliveries so that could be an issue if you don't have the estimated time, but being in the business 10 years I feel this isn't an issue and your delivers are delivered in such a time you get repeat business.
Use your companies age as a plus and the fact you survived because your a solid business to purchase from and test this for a period of time to see if the sales do take a tank. Put your contact info were it is easy to find and a 800 number to call. You can always hire a US answering service to take calls and route them to you.
As you can assume, we have a well honed response e-mail by now! We state that we prefer to answer all pre-sales queries by e-mail because it allows us to direct your question to the right person blah, blah, and in 90% of cases that is sufficient, and they put their questions in an e-mail, but a few are persistent about this talking to a human.
We have our warehouse on our property behind our home. We have a legit permit to run the business out of our warehouse but since it is residential we are not allowed to have a "store front" due to the lack of proper traffic signals and parking. In addition, we would be required to have additional insurance to cover customer liability claims if they hurt themselves on our property.
When we had our address on our site, we would have customers just show up. This became an issue due to the reasons stated above so we removed the address. We have seen no decline in sales since doing so and in fact are still seeing excellent growth.
* American resistance to buying products from outside the country.
* People showing up at the door at 8:00am Sunday morning.
* Narrow profit margins preclude phone support.
* Customers who phone have historically been time wasters
looking for freebies or customers who don't even read the two sentence disclaimers on the prepayment pages:
"This product ships 48-72 hours during our Regular Office Hours ( Bold type)Monday to Friday 8:00AM -6:00pm.Orders received after 6:00pm Friday EST will be processed the following Monday in order of receipt"
*Even with the above we used to get emails time dated to within five minutes of 48 hours for items ordered
Friday @ 7:00pm on Sunday @ 7:00PM, demanding instant action, phone number address etc. Some how the whole office closed Saturday & Sunday and 48-72 hour delivery time thing escapes them.......
We do list on our site the fact we were a traditional "Bricks & Mortar" business starting in 1959, closing our traditional storefront office when we went online in 1996.
We now only get about five requests a year for our phone number, invariably requesting information they have already
been provided via automated email and the FAQ.
Lovejoy
