Howdy folks!
Well, we're on schedule to put new posters in the web store tomorrow, so here's your head's up on that.... the Jam in the Dam, Umphrey's McGee and PGroove St. Paddy's Day posters will be new in the store tomorrow some time after lunch. I've also been trying to get some One-of-a-Kind items up in that section but I'm not sure if that will happen before tomorrow. I'll try...
Which brings me to the part of the title of this blog post - Patience and Contacting DCS.
For the last several months Jeff and I have been trying to figure ouut how to cut our hours back here at the shop. We've been working from about 9am until abuot midnight pretty regularly for the last several years. Why? Because during the day we have so many interuptions and distractions, we actually don't get any work done until after the rest of the sane world goes home to eat dinner and plop their booties in the easy chair to watch the evening news. We would very much like to get our work done during normal work hours, too, so we can have time for personal art projects and to work on our garden.
In light of that, we've been trying to streamline the order process, the design process and our print schedule. It takes time to transition. It also takes time to work in the web store trying to fix the listings there and add new product. We're also trying to redesign and completely upgrade the software for our web site. Mistakes are easily made when we have to stop to answer the phone or get pulled away to do something else. And we get pulled away a LOT.
How can you guys help? Well, for one thing, please be patient with us on orders. We take a little longer than we used to getting orders processed and shipped, but we're taking more orders than we did back when we shipped the same or next day we received an order. We know you're anxious to get the prints you've ordered, but give us a couple of weeks before you start getting worried. We're also trying to make sure shipping notices are sent when your shipping label is printed so you'll know what date it shipped and have the Delivery Confirmation number.
The time we need to work on these things will hopefully benefit everyone. The ordering process should be easier and less quirky and the web site should be easier to navigate. We managed to get the coding for Paypal payments added to the site yesterday in time for the release tomorrow. I'm not promising perfection, but it should help speed up the ordering process since I won't have to send out Pay Requests and wait for those to be paid until I send the invoice to Rick to be shipped.
For those of you who don't know, let me explain the ordering process:
When an order is placed, it comes to me encrypted. I then decrypt the order and copy and paste the info into Quickbooks where I manually process credit card payments. Credit card payments do not go through when your order is placed, so if you accidentally send 2 identical orders, you will not be charged automatically for both. We set up our store that way to prevent card fraud and having to void and refund payments on duplicate orders. This is why you do not get the Quickbooks invoice right away when your order is placed.
After the order is input and paid, I email a copy of it to the customer and to Rick Ramirez at Temple Ball Gallery in North Carolina where the orders are then shipped out to locations all over the world. Like Jeff and myself, Rick also has a multitude of irons in the fire. Sometimes it takes him a week or so to get orders shipped, especially when we do a release and take a lot of orders at once. Rick is just about the only person in the world I would trust to ship all of our orders, partly because i know he takes his time to assure that your posters are packaged right to arrive at their final destinations in mint condition.
I know some folks like to call to check on orders, but we took the studio phone number off the web site. For concerns about the order itself, please send an email with your order# (it should be something like FD03545) and your questions to me at the sales-at-drowningcreek-dot-com address. That gives me a chance to look into it if there is a problem instead of trying to figure it our while I have you on the phone. I usually write back very quickly on inquiries regarding orders. If you have a question about shipping dates, contact Rick-at-templeball-dot-com.
We're headed in great directions, folks, just be patient with us while we get further on down the road.......
Love and Rockets,
Judy
Labels: orders, posters, Shipping, Temple Ball
