Delivery Issues That Can Affect A Drop-Ship Home-Based Business
While there is no doubt that the drop-shipping option offers many advantages for a home-based business entrepreneur, there are a few major downsides too. If you are running a home-based business, you have no option but to depend completely on your drop-ship vendor to provide good service. Some of the common problems faced by a home-based business are listed below.You neither get to see the product nor the way it is packed when you forward an order to your drop-shipper. The product may not be packed or handled the way you would do it if you had a choice.Your reputation as a professional business may take a hit if your drop-shipper repeatedly delivers late, delivers short, or sends the wrong product to your customers. This can influence the quality of feedback that you get and may affect your business adversely.There is no way that you can find out if the drop-shipper that you have selected is not one of those unscrupulous operators out to make a fast buck at your cost. The Internet is replete with such examples. Unfortunately, you will be able to identify such elements only after the damage is done because of the anonymity the net offers to such scammers.It is now very easy to start an online selling business. Entrepreneurs do not have to own office or warehouse space, and there is practically no investment. Competition is therefore very fierce. To overcome and race ahead of other sellers, your pricing has to be very competitive. Low pricing might not be possible due to the high cost of drop-shipping. This means operating on wafer-thin margins, leaving your business susceptible to losses.As you are entirely dependent on your drop-ship supplier to deliver your orders, you have no control over inventories. You may not be able to meet the demand for certain products because your supplier does not have the stock. You run the risk of losing business to the competition if this happens too often.It happens quite frequently that the inventory list displayed by the drop-ship supplier and their actual stock is different. If you book orders based on the inventory list, only to realize later that the product is out of stock, it can do serious damage to your reputation. This can be even more embarrassing when the customer has paid for the product.Make sure you know everything about the drop-ship supplier’s policy on return goods. If your customer returns a product for reasons of packaging, quality, or simply because the wrong product was delivered, and the drop-shipper refuses to accept it back, citing policy reasons, then you are stuck with the product. When it happens a few times, it can wipe out your profits. Having a clear agreement with the drop-shipper about return goods can help you deal with this problem differently.These are some of the common problems faced by a home-based business when dealing with an unknown drop-ship supplier. You can ask for references from friends or others who are into home-based businesses to mitigate the risk of dealing with dishonest suppliers.
