It’s always darkest before the dawn, or so they say.
If that’s the case, then I’m really looking forward to the next week.
During this week I was working on getting setup with a Prep Center for my Amazon store, which, simply put, takes in deliveries of goods from either other retailers, wholesalers or distributors, and then repacks and labels those goods so that they are ready to be sold on Amazon.
That doesn’t sound so bad, right?
“Well why so down in the dumps then, Noel?” you may ask.
Well kind stranger, let me tell you a story about one man and his quest to find a Prep Center for his Amazon store.
Like in most stories, our protagonist sets out on an adventure, with a clear goal in mind – in this case, to find and work with a reputable Prep Center.
Shortly after starting his journey, our hero meets a nice Prep Center salesman.
This kindly and polite salesman promises all sorts of wonderful things, at reasonable rates, and only a fool would pass up such an offer to work with this amazing Prep Center company!
But a fool our hero is not, so he quickly takes action, seizing this once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the best in the business!
However, once he finishes signing his life away, like in all good stories (and this not being one of them), comes the inevitable twist – the salesman takes off his mask to reveal that he is actually the villain of the story – dun, dun, derrrrr (who saw that coming?).
OK, I’m not Tolkien. But the gist of it is that I signed up to work with a Prep Center, who upon getting me to sign up, then revealed how they actually functioned, which was in no way what had previously been advertised, discussed or shown in any way – which actually breaks the contract that I signed with them, according to the contracts own terms and conditions, specifically term Number 6 – “Nothing contained in this Agreement shall exclude or limit either party’s liability: “, Part (B) – “Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation”.
So, what exactly did they fraudulently misrepresent when getting me to sign up, you may ponder?
Simply this – they expected me to send them boxes and units in a specific format, labelled in a specific way.
Yes, you read that correctly. The “Prep Center” expected me to prepare my inventory in a certain way before shipping it to them – which really then begs the question – what service is the “Prep Center” offering, exactly?
Slightly upset and confused by this, I got in contact with them to see if there had been some misunderstanding on my part – surely they didn’t actually expect me to prepare everything AND still pay to use their (now pointless) service, right?
They completely expected me to prepare all my units before shipping them over to the “Prep Center”. They also gave me a spreadsheet to fill in for the first shipment, that had six separate tabs, asking all sorts of information that I would not be in a position to provide them with, including all the dimensions of each box that was going to be shipped, the number of boxes, how to place items from one box into another (but I would need to specify which boxes to use in this case), and a bunch of other stuff which seemed a bit unnecessary for a single delivery to them.
If you think I’m going overboard here, and being a bit melodramatic, then checkout this image showing how they expected every incoming box to their “Prep Center” to be labelled:
It felt silly, it felt wrong, and it was all just a bit too much. It definitely didn’t feel like a scalable system.
So, flooded with the feeling of desperation, I went back to prepcenter.com and looked for an alternative that would actually be able to deliver on their promises.
Sure enough, I found such a Prep Center (use of quotes no longer needed).
And what horrendous acts to they expect me to commit in order to utilise their services? What reams of documents, spreadsheets and web sessions do I need to endure?
None.
I simply signed up for their service, then they gave me the address to send goods to (that same minute, not two weeks later after web sessions and contracts all over the place), and they gave me their two rules that I need to follow when sending deliveries to their Prep Center:
- The delivery needs to have my name on it (naturally), and
- The delivery needs to have their address on it – duh
I also need to create an inbound record, online, in a web-form, that tells them the tracking number, once the goods have been shipped.
And that’s it.
So simple, yet, hopefully, so effective.
And what is my key takeaway lesson from all this, what pearly nugget of wisdom did I pluck from this experience?
Perhaps it was that it pays to do your homework, and to research companies that you’re thinking of working with, well in advance of signing contracts with them (I later found quite a few one star reviews for the first Prep Center – it seems I was not the only person to have trouble with them).
Perhaps I should have remembered my Cub Scout days, to “Be Prepared”.
Whatever the lesson here, I will be more cautious when it comes to signing contracts in the future, and definitely take the necessary time to be prepared – so that I don’t end up having to pre-prepare for being prepared.
