On a Friday in November 2009, a guy called Lewis called me to ask me if I was interested in putting my products (I sell a range of handpainted personalised pottery gifts) on MyFavShop (now called shoppingbank). My first warning sign should have been that despite doing a lot of shopping for my business and home online I had never heard of them. However I wanted, and still want to grow my business www.glazedforkeeps.co.uk and he told me, things like; they were affiliated with GMTV; they get tens of thousands of visitors each day; asked me how many more orders I could cope with; he said they needed my shop to be successful because without sales they would not make money. He told such a good story I was worried that I wouldn't be able to manage the extra orders. So I said I would think about it over the weekend.

I looked at the site at the weekend and despite there being literally 100's products competing with mine I decided to go ahead. That should have been my 2nd warning sign. There was an upfront fee of £805 plus they were taking a 10% commission. In addition you have to give the customers cash back and you pay the payment/credit card fees as the payment are paid direct to your account. However I worked out that I needed 5 orders per month to cover the cost of going on this site. Whilst the sales person never promised any number of sales all the things he said made me think that this was completely achievable and said they would lose money on me if I didn't sell and my account manager would help me ensure my products did sell.

Once I agreed, the process to set up the shop was very efficient and they were very helpful in getting my products onto the site. I just needed to wait for the flood of orders. I wasn't too worried that nothing came before Christmas as I was too busy processing my orders from my site and other sites I resell on and I know it takes a few weeks for Google to index new pages. In the new year I tried to contact Lewis, he had left. I then spoke to Lesley, she made some suggestions which I implemented and arranged for my best sellers (as measured by sales on other sites) to be featured, but I still received no sales. My account manager has never contacted me unless I contacted her and I have received no help unless I have asked for it and the help has not increased sales in anyway. In one year I have had less than 10 sales. I am seriously out of pocket.

I tried to get some of my money back in May, by suggesting they close my shop and give me some of the upfront fee back, but they ignored this request, so now all I can do is warn other small businesses like mine. If I had thought about it, I should have realised that I could buy an awful lot of Google Ad-Words for £800. Shops on Ebay and Amazon cost and awful lot less to set up, even if the commission is higher and are much better known. Other resellers like CraftMarketCorner, take 20% (but pay the card fees), have a small upfront set up cost and more importantly provide more than 10 orders in a year.

I was an idiot, I did not apply any business common sense to this buying decision and these are my tips for avoiding this situation if you are approached shoppingbank or any other company offering to showcase your products with an upfront fee.
1. Have you heard of this company? If not check with a few friends, colleagues or even some of your best customers if they have heard of them. If not avoid like the plague.
2. If there is a large upfront cost, think about what you are getting for this and what else you could spend your money on that might give better results May be something like ad-words or shops like Ebay that you can do on a pay as you go approach would be better.
3. Commission - 10% sounded good, but with the customer cash back and picking up the credit/debit card fees this worked out higher than the 20% my other resellers charge.
4. If you do decide to go ahead negotiate the contract to have a get out clause if there are not a certain level of sales within 90 days for example.
5. Talk or email some of the companies that seem of a similar size to you on the site to see how many sales they are getting.

Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware is my watch word for Shopping Bank and any other person trying to sell me anything"

I have just had a phone call from them there e-mail is not good either the link to their website ShoppingBank.com in fact goes to different web address i have done some more research and it does not look good please keep away from them.

I have even ringed a couple of companies who use them and they both said the same thing they want their money back.

The reason why they called me as I have another online business selling quality online specialist gifts. I have now blocked their phone number.

Here is a tip so you do not get scammed do your research check reviews on the web ring clients up get case studies before you part with your money.

Michael

Business1Directory.com

Be safe on the web

Hi I just want to say that i'm really grateful to find this page of all the same stories about Shopping Bank, E-directory, my-fave shop.
They contacted me in October and gave me the hard, very hard sell actually. With pushing the My-faveshhop as the new brain child of Lord Saarchi and I acually liked the look of the site. I paid £1200 for a years listing for 50 products and a micro site. I thought I was being clever and asked for recommedations to follow up and spoke to one merchant who said 20% of their sales came through My-faveshop. I paid up and by the time my listing was live they had changed the name to Shopping Bank.com which looked really awful and not what I had paid to be on. I asked for my money back and they said I was unable to get a refund and to give it a chance. Not one order came through over the whole xmas period ( I sell jeans ) and then one did and it was fraudulant and resulted in a charge back! infact 2 out of the 3 sales I have had have been fraudulant through Shopping Bank.
So we all seem to have the same story but why are they still getting people to sign up? We need to make sure our stories are heard and if your behind me please email me as something needs to be done.

Alot of people have had exaclty the same experience with e-directory I am looking for anyone who has been sold or had a slae rep try to sell to them.

What they are doing in illegal telling a complete bunch of lies, to lure people to signing up.

I was promised page 1 google listings for every product in what ever term I wanted and treated like a moron when questioned how to make this happen. It's not possible all they do is submit your products to Google.

I have sold absolutley nothing.

Dont touch don't even listen they sell by lies. If any one is having problems with e direcotry or My fave shop please contact me. Ryder Gift LTD

We have not had a single sale through e-directory in over 8 months after paying their £1000 annual fee. They are a disgrace - merchants avoid them like the plague!

As a small online business I was looking for greater exposure - the people who find my website like it, but finding it is the problem.

I joined edirectory as a merchant at the end of February 2009 because they were 'Desperate for more products in their personalised gifts for her section'.

We sell very unique and unusual personalised gifts/gift service - it's 'up- market' but not expensive and it is innovative. The rep assured me that we were JUST the kind of company he needed to fill this gap! Obviously he couldnt guarantee results but ... bla.. bla...bla....

When my husband and I looked at the section there were 12 items or so and none of them were inspiring. Nevertheless, when we asked about a specific item the rep said that the merchant had sold 15 of those in the last month!

My husband who works in IT and gets the whole visitors/purchases/conversions stats thing drilled the rep down for more information - he gave us some highlights but didnt have much detailed info. We ignored our gut feeling and hoped that edirectory with its tens of 1000's of visitors per day would give our business greater exposure to a wider audience and signed up.

Originally our 'account manager' put most of the things on the 'personalised gifts other' section along with the other 2400 other personalised gifts - some of which are so bizarre I do not have the time nor the vocabulary to describe them. We discussed this at length and I am still none the wiser about this decision.

We recently moved to 'P.G for her' and I have sold a grand total of 3 products in a month! No wonder they weren't prepared to give us a month's trial. It's not looking like the best decision we ever made.

Ok so it might just be that our stuff is not up to scratch! But, the customers who do find our website and order from it dont think so.

Our edirectory experience has been poor! Retrospectively I would have bought a new dress and taken my husband out for a ridiculously expensive meal! It might not have got us any sales, but at least it would have been fun!

I was told that the womens clothing section of eDirectory.co.uk was a busy area with lots of returning customers, we have performend well in previous other sites. Our online store currently works very well with regular sales.
I would not have paid the fee for such a poor performing website.
I took their word and when I asked for a refund was flatly refused.
If they were as good as they say, I'm sure they will soon loose the fee to sign up (but I doubt this will happen).
Other website owners should be aware.
Staff seem to work part time.

Website said the item was in stock, I placed the order on 5th December and I received an email confirming the order. I received an email on 14th December with a status update for the order. It said order status: Cancelled. Absolutely no reason given, no email to say card declined, or out of stock. They just cancelled the order. Also it took them 10 days to decide to cancel the order.

I had ordered a bike lock from M&P on the 19th September (4 - 5 days delivery) and when it hadn't arrived by the 26th I sent them an email. I received a reply back saying it was out of stock. So exactly when were they going to tell me? Had it not been for my email I could have been blissfully waiting for ever. I then decided to go on the internet and find another supplier. I came up with 'eDirectory' and ordered the same product. I got an email confirming my order, or so I thought! I then got an email from M&P apologising, but the item ordered (through eDirectory) is out of stock! Had I known it was M&P I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole. I won't use eDirectory again, or at least until they make clear who is supplying the goods.

PS I won't be using M&P again.

eDirectory didn't tell me where the item was shipped from and what other charges there would be. Also, delivery timing was very bad.