Reccomendation against Volusion

[Matt@Volusion]

@VolusionEX: As a representative and current Volusion team member, I’d like to step in and let others know that your claims of layoffs and the idea of borrowing funds are simply untrue. To the contrary, we have hired 50+ new employees since the beginning of 2011 and currently have 25+ available positions that we’re actively hiring for. Regarding the assumption of “borrowing funds,” we recently received a $7 million line of credit to continue growth, none of which was required to maintain daily operations, including payroll.

Furthermore, we’ve made big strides in boosting our customer support by updating support channels and hiring more representatives, which has substantially reduced our average hold times. We’ve also made significant product updates, including new and enhanced features. Our business focus is to continuously improve all facets of our offering to help us better serve our merchants.

[JEccles]

Matt - kudo's on the progress that you are making. May I point 1 thing out though?

Furthermore, we’ve made big strides in boosting our customer support by updating support channels and hiring more representatives, which has substantially reduced our average hold times.

Adding reps to your phone tree is only going to help if they know what they are talking about.

[lightingguru]

I am kind of on the fence on this one. I have tried several storefronts / shopping carts such as volusion, big commerce and yahoo. Currently I am with volusion and I am fairly happy. But I do have to agree that there technical support has gone way down ever since the move. you have to go through several people to get a answer to things and typically you do better researching them out on you on on forums and other resources. I hope that this is something they can improve on because as a whole they are one of the better providers I have used. They all have pros and cons and this is definetly a con.

[VolusionEX]

@VolusionEX: As a representative and current Volusion team member, I’d like to step in and let others know that your claims of layoffs and the idea of borrowing funds are simply untrue. To the contrary, we have hired 50+ new employees since the beginning of 2011 and currently have 25+ available positions that we’re actively hiring for. Regarding the assumption of “borrowing funds,” we recently received a $7 million line of credit to continue growth, none of which was required to maintain daily operations, including payroll.

Furthermore, we’ve made big strides in boosting our customer support by updating support channels and hiring more representatives, which has substantially reduced our average hold times. We’ve also made significant product updates, including new and enhanced features. Our business focus is to continuously improve all facets of our offering to help us better serve our merchants.

No lay offs? What do you call what happened to myself and all the other "team" members in California? What about the guys now returning to California? Tell the truth.

[AnotherEXvol]

No lay offs? What do you call what happened to myself and all the other "team" members in California? What about the guys now returning to California? Tell the truth.

And count me as another. I still remember how they literally had around 5 FBI faced trench-coat's running around the building gathering everyone up and telling them to gtfo.

Classy. Matt just seems to be feeding the generic response that you would expect from the "newer" current Volusion employees.

[japhi]

I just registered to post my thoughts on this thread. There are a lot of 1st time posters slamming Volusion, and I am suprised the forum mods / admin lets this continue. If I were the admin I would ask anyone slamming a company to offer up their name and dates they were with Volusion. Another forum I post on asks that any direct complaints are supported by evidence that the complaintant used the produce. Seems fair to me.

Here are my thoughts:

* I'd expect people posting on a business forum to have a better understanding on how business works! We should all hope our businesses grow fast enough were we can consolidate multiple employee locations.

* Very few people posting on this thread seem to understand how businesses that are in growth mode - and then consolidation mode - operate. While a business is growing, regional employee populations spring up. There are likely regional partners and support gets built out around where a key employee is. You basically do what you have to do to grow the business. Cost of service delivery is less important than servicing a growing client base.

* Consolidation (or implosion) eventually occurs. Consolidation does not need to result in a net decrease in jobs, or in service levels. In any business it always makes sense to have as many employees under one roof as possible. Consolidated populations are easier to manage, and the quality of the support should increase, not decrease. There are many reasons for this; easier training and managing of employees being the biggest one. Disclaimer: if the call centre is being outsourced to India everything I said above is recanted!

* I understand (but don't respect) that employees that were layed off will be upset, and throw the company under the bus. If you are considering a certain shopping cart system I would suggest you talk to current client running that system and ignore random Internet postings.

For the record I don't work for or even use Volusion for my store. I test drove Volusion against Shopify and Shopify was a much cleaner solution for my store. I found the Volusion back end to be cluttered and slow.

That said, I do think the folks at Volusion have a great product and value proposition to ecommerce merchants. I may use them in the future.

I'm only posting here because I can't stand these types of thread, where a bunch of first time posters pile on and slam a company. Wouldn't you hate it if this was your company these anonymous posters were taking aim at? Me too.

Even worse when they show a lack of understanding of the realities of running a business. If you've never hired a large number of employees, or ran a large business, you will not understand how challenging it is to manage employee and real estate costs.

[roban]

Good points japhi. While it's not within the bounds of a moderator's duty here to validate a poster's opinion you do make some very good points. As a helper/developer of 2 carts systems I have found that these systems are sometimes released before the bugs are worked out but it's the only way to do it. That's what updates and revisions are for and these solutions must be run in real time to find problems. Without the help of users most systems simply could not be updated and they are very complicated systems make no mistake.

I hope you will join in the discussions here rather than just to comment on one thread.

[gaurav03]

You should try vplanetcommerce it provides a good SEO services and help you in starting your own eCommerce store in minimum cost.

[WasAlsoVol]

@VolusionEX: As a representative and current Volusion team member, I’d like to step in and let others know that your claims of layoffs and the idea of borrowing funds are simply untrue. To the contrary, we have hired 50+ new employees since the beginning of 2011 and currently have 25+ available positions that we’re actively hiring for. Regarding the assumption of “borrowing funds,” we recently received a $7 million line of credit to continue growth, none of which was required to maintain daily operations, including payroll.

Furthermore, we’ve made big strides in boosting our customer support by updating support channels and hiring more representatives, which has substantially reduced our average hold times. We’ve also made significant product updates, including new and enhanced features. Our business focus is to continuously improve all facets of our offering to help us better serve our merchants.

That is such a bald-faced lie and you know it. I was with Volusion for a long time. They kicked me out the building and then called and threatened me not tell anybody what was going on. It amazed me that a company that called you family a day before will do that to you and then still use your pictures to promote their products. An owner and CEO that pretends to be a devoted Christian and treats you to lunches kicks you out without thinking twice.
If a company does that to its employees imagine what they do to customers.

[VolusionEX]

And count me as another. I still remember how they literally had around 5 FBI faced trench-coat's running around the building gathering everyone up and telling them to gtfo.

Classy. Matt just seems to be feeding the generic response that you would expect from the "newer" current Volusion employees.

Seems like Matt has no response to justify what happened to all of us, or to the more recent "quiet" event. My few friends who still work there tell me it's really bad. Between the lay offs and all the people who quit, there's very few left who know how the technology works. That's why it takes so long for new sites to come up, or to get SSL certs, and is why there's so so much down time.

[tommoody654]

User banned for creating more than one user account.

[algozone]

All this is a publicity scandal. Companies cutting cost left and right. This is normal. How they treat employees is between employees and the company, we will never know the truth. Upset employees can post anything on frustration level. I Feel sorry that this happened.

Important to see in the future that cost cutting does not effect customers and level of service company provides.

[brennanpadilla1]

User banned for creating more than one user account.

[ecommerce-hosti]

These seems to be a common thread that support has recently gone downhill at Volusion if you read around the net. They were once a leader in the ecommerce field. It takes a lot for an employee to understand a whole platform and answer any and all questions, ie quite a bit of training etc.

I think with any company though a layoff always creates hard feelings so who knows how much of this is true. Companies are afraid so they don't tell you anything ahead of time and then just escort you out the door quickly.

Good luck to the current Volusion customers, I hope things are ok and the downtime issues have been resolved and to the ex-Volusion employees I'm sure you can find jobs at some of the competitors there are so many new shopping cart providers popping up but I'm sorry to hear what you went through.

[rorycomo]

The focus of the company from a service perspective seems to be on features that they think enterprise customers want.