I have been an avid user of oscommerce for years now, so I was interested to see a new open-source ecommerce platform on the scene called Magento.

Oscommerce by itself is not much use, but a few mods on the layout and a handful of add-ons and it becomes really useful, but it has it’s issues . Magento appears to try and address these issues and make the customers buying experience more fluid and intuitive, but the only version available for download right now is a beta version with new updates being very frequent if does not look like a sensible choice yet for a fully operational commercial website, but I’m watching and waiting for a stable proper release.

You can see Magento at www.magentocommerce.com

I have been running an ecommerce web site here in Thailand for some time now, it’s got easier over the years for two main reasons.

• The Postal Service has got more reliable.
• It’s easy to accept credit cards and get paid to my Thailand Bank.

For years I would only ever use International Registered Airmail, but last year the cost of International Registration doubled and that has had a serious impact on my postage costs. I need to keep my postage costs low because my customers have the option of ordering from a UK seller which would mean lower postage, so I subsidise the postage a little based on my making a decent profit from the goods that I sell.

A couple of months ago I got about 8 packages returned, all but one had a sticker from the UK post office to say that delivery had been attempted and due to nobody being home a card had been left, and nobody had collected the parcel from the sorting office. The other one said “no such address” which is strange as it was verified by the credit card company.

It’s fair to say that a great deal of my time is spent dealing with cutomers who are waiting for their parcel to arrive, and if it gets to 14 days after posting I always suggest that they check the sorting office. But recently I have started sending items by plain Airmail with no registration, the result is that items are getting there faster, and the level of complaints of non delivery have gone down to virtually nothing.

I know that if a customer makes a chargeback based on non delivery then I would not have a leg to stand on, but I guess that’s unlikely given the kind of product I sell online. And I’m saving lots of money on postage too.

I love eBay, I really do. I live in Thailand and there are many things that I just cannot source locally, eBay is nearly always the answer if the item I want is not too heavy or bulky.

A few months ago I bought a Kawasaki Vulcan motorbike from a local dealer which had just been imported from Japan. I’m really very fussy about my bikes and I like everything to be perfect and original, and though my Kawasaki looks like new it is in fact a few years old. I made a list of all the things I needed to make it perfect, including changing a few after market items for Kawasaki original items, including the front turn indicators.

I found everything I needed on eBay, and with a combination of bidding and using “Buy Now” I had bought everything that I needed..so I sat back and waited for it all to arrive.

All items except the Indicators had arrived within 2 weeks, so after about 3 weeks I sent a polite email to the seller who is based in Canada. I asked him if he could just confirm posting and let me know which carrier he had used. I explained that I’m not in a panic for the parts but that I would like to be reassured that they are on their way. He replied to state that he has sent them by surface mail! Whoa, Canada is on the other side of the world, and I know from experience that the postage price I paid was more than enough to cover air mail (I did check this with Canada Post to be sure). I asked the seller if he had proof of posting, a tracking number and if he could let me know the actual postage cost.. guess what, no reply!

Now before I go any further I know that the postage cost can be used by the seller to cover all his or her costs and will often be more than the “actual” postage cost. But this guy charged me a lot more than the “actual” cost of airmail and then sent it by surface mail, which to me is wrong.

Anyway, fast forward nearly 2 months and I’m still waiting. I have now emailed him and told him that IF he does not have a tracking number or proof of postage then I’m holding him responsible and I’m inviting him to suggest a course of action before I leave feedback for him. I really really do not want to leave negative feedback for this guy, but I feel cheated on the postage and I’m out of pocket USD $79 for a pair of indicators..not to mention I cannot finish my bike.

Any comments from readers would be welcome. Am I being hard on this guy or should I go ahead and neg him?