People, before you trust your customer list to some drop shipper....THINK!
Not only do dropship suppliers encounter tons of customer data incident to their drop shipping, but
I'm seeing more of our wholesale suppliers directly collecting customer email addresses, often under the guise of a website survey. Many wholesalers have sites that could be adopted for direct B to C ecommerce in minutes. Only one of our suppliers has "gone direct" so far (and we've stopped buying from them). But in these tough times, I don't trust any of our suppliers.
Plus, more subtle risks lurk when your supplier collects information about end customers.
For example, the head IT guy at of one of our largest suppliers put his wife into the business of selling his employer's products. She opened a tiny storefront but a very big website. He had the ability of downloading every drop ship customer onto a memory stick and bringing it home to wifey. He knew exactly which products sold best online. He could easily determine which kinds of websites were must successful. He had the ability to know everything!
What a conflict of interest!
I complained to that supplier and they immediately stopped shipping her. But what would have happened if he had done a better job of hiding the ownership of his wife's company? Or if he simply sold the data to an established retailer?
We do almost no drop shipping to our online customers. The risks are just too huge, too tempting.
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Question: do you obtain written guarantees from your suppliers that information they use in drop shipping is protected: 1) From their abuse? 2) From abuse by their employees?
