Dear Dayre,
TGIF?
I logged into my blog today to find a few comments on my blog and one of them left me feeling quite hurt.
The first comment from a concerned reader/customer a couple days ago, asking what happened to TVD's website.
Then, another reader/customer left a comment, and a second comment when her earlier comment was not replied to..
Firstly, I apologize because I don't reply blog comments on a daily basis, but I did not expect to be called irresponsible for not having replied a couple of comments left just 1-2 days ago..
I know that some customers have been wondering what happened to TVD, and if they don't follow me as closely on Dayre or wherever, they might be totally clueless to what happened.
I don't believe readers/customers can be feeling more upset or frustrated than I am when it comes to TVD.
Why would I want to deprive myself of income for the past couple of months by closing down TVD's website totally? TVD is my bread and butter, but I knew that I could not carry on operating on a faulty system that was creating SO many issues at the backend, and causing so many customers' orders to screw up?
Unhappy customers, yes. Of course I know about that. Do you know how serious it is to have to refund 40 or 50 customers every collection because their order got messed up by the system?
The whole system was just screwing up after we did a system update. Stock inventory not deducted correctly and items got oversold, PayPal payments made but customer's order was cancelled by system, orders could not be bulk edited, completed or exported.
Sent in so many tickets to the help desk and support, and tried to get programmers to fix it, but to no avail.
And thanks to all the bugs, we had to spend hours and hours trying to salvage the situation, informing customers about problematic orders, doing refunds for customers, explaining problems and doing what we could to fix issues.
I spent a few thousand dollars on this website just to have it fail epicly on me. And now I have to look for another new system to replace the current one that is totally un-usable at this stage.
I am really sorry about it. More sorry than any customer would know.
But all I have now are negative critisisms and bad comments about TVD, because of all the issues caused by the website. And I can't do anything but to apologize đ We did everything we could to attend to all the botched up orders to the best of our abilities. Even now that the website is closed, emails are still being replied, refunds are still being made.
Being labelled as irresponsible and heck-care is really hurtful, because if I were more irresponsible, I would just keep the website online during this period of time to get whatever sales I could. Just refund customers for botched up orders only mah! At least I'd still have some successful orders and earn from those orders.
But I knew I could not serve customers competently on that website anymore, which is why I made the huge decision to completely shut down the website whilst I looked for a new web solution to replace the current system.
At least knowing that there would be no more problematic orders (or rather no orders at all) gave me a peace of mind because I really don't want even more customers to be unhappy when orders screwed up. It's not as easy as what the customer thinks it is to fix a broken website.
I'm under even more tremendous stress than you are to have my website back up and running again. New website means additional expenses. Rent to be paid, staff to be salaried, bills and invoices to be settled, even when there's no money coming in.
I wish you would understand how I feel.
The good news is.. The new website is currently underworks already and I hope that it will be up and running in May! (Which I mentioned in the previous entry too anyway)
I'm thankful still for the loyal customers, I know there are still those of you who have remained supportive despite all the negativity surrounding TVD. TVD will be back better than before! Praying so hard that the new website will be up-to-par with no more problems. đ