1shoppingcart’s system is down again!

All the commerce at TollFreeNumbers.com goes through 1shoppingcart.com. Actually we rely on them for even more than just the commerce. Their system does most of the follow up emailing for orders and reservations and is the basis for the affiliate program too.

A high percentage of the customers we get are starting their own business so I often get questions about who we use for the commerce on our website, among other things. I used to rave about 1shoppingcart. We’ve used them for years and have been very happy with them. They’ve been responsive and helped fix things and even made changes in their system for us at one point. If there was any one vendor that I would want to lose the least in my business, it is probably them. We rely on them quite a lot and it would honestly be a nightmare to change things at this point. That’s why my comments here are very reserved but also why I think it’s important to say something too, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to wind up being so dependent on them at this point.

I think the problems honestly started when 1shoppingcart was sold by the original founder to a larger company several months ago. There weren’t any changes at first but there have been more and more problems lately that are definitely hurting. And the worst part is that they seem unable to explain them and simply try to brush them off as “upgrades”.

Their “upgrades,” to the order notification, consisted of removing much of the information necessary to complete the order (including the shipping address, the affiliate information and the comments). They took all of the information out of the subject and did this all with no notice or warning at all. When asked about it, they simply said this was an upgrade that had been planned for some time and was in response to user requests. Even when asked politely over the phone they simply refused to explain anything or give even a plausibly honest answer.

I didn’t really say anything about this at the time. They put most of these things back over the next week. Rita and I figured that the best explanation was either a hacker “broke” the code or merging the system into the parent company’s system broke it somehow. Oh, I forgot to mention that the system had been getting slow and even blacking out momentarily before the email notification changes. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it.

We recently noticed another issue with the affiliate program. The bottom line is that they simply shut it down. They say it’s part of an upcoming upgrade, but it’s been down for at least this whole week allegedly for an upgrade that hasn’t even gone into effect yet. I definitely hope their “upgrades” to the affiliate program are worth shutting it down like this for.

I’m not attacking or bad mouthing 1shoppingcart here. I’m merely trying to share what I’ve observed personally. I’ve been a customer of theirs for years and I rely on them quite a bit. I have nothing to gain and no axe to grind beyond the truth. I believe the benefit they have provided to my business over the years I’ve used them outweighs the recent problems. But I can tell you that I have a lot more concern about them at this point than I ever did before and I don’t recommend them to customers like I used to.

Update: 2/28/07 It's still deader than a door knob.
I also did some research and 1shoppingcart is having a LOT of other technical problems, especially with email delivery. They had to change their whole email system because it got blacklisted. They've got a LOT of problems lately. One other possiblity we came up with is that after the merger some of the key technical people may have left or been let go? That's just how it feels, anyway.