Come on guys..

[paladinx]

I haven't read through the threads, but I am sure this isn't the only post complaining. So instead of complaining I want to make it more of a question. I have tried to order from you guys in the past and it took me about 3 months to be able to make an order.. Now I been wanting to order again.. and its been months again. I understand the site was down due to maintenance.. now you guys are up and every time I go to order your out of stock.. I thought you closed down because the demand was so much greater than you're supply.. I figured when you guys came back you would have everything straightened out and have a surplus to sell. But its the same thing all over again.. I mean I don't get it, If you are can make so much money because everyone wants your juice.. wouldn't you expand the way mt bakers vaper did? Get more people working get more juice.. isn't there potential to make a lot of money the more you sell? Or it doesn't work that way.. I just get confused.. If i owned a business and I had a ridiculous demand for my product and there is a lot of potential to make a fortune.. I probably would do what you did and close it down but I would come back with a team of people or make sure I can sell in high volume. It just seems like many of these sites that sell our juices are really unprofessional. Like someone is mixing juices in their basement without absolutely no clue on how to run a business.

You guys were gone for months.. there is no excuse why your quota is maxed out after 1 hour of being open for business. You probably have dozens, or hundreds of people who reorder from your competitors.. your losing a fortune.. So my question is.. do you get like 20 million orders a day.. what is the reason why you wouldn't want to make as much money as you can.. I would be taking a loan out if i had to .. to invest in a huge surplus and I would hire help.

 

[Beerbrah]

They dont open back up until Monday morning, I think?

 

[paladinx]

I think they are open, they just stop taking orders after 2 hours. If you don't log in at like 8am you can't buy from these people.. its ridiculous. Specialty items that cost a fortune per item I can understand.. but I figure with juice.. the more you sell the more money you make.

 

[BentWookie]

@paladinx - They have been shut down now for about 2 months'ish. It stemmed from a problem with their credit card processing being compromised. The owners made the decision that they should shut down for a while, tear down the old system, and rebuild from scratch in hopes of building a more secure site amongst other things. Ben (one of the owners/operators) has also been on here to explain that there are things going on in the operations side. They've continued to build the stock of supplies, hired more employees, and from what I understand added more square footage to the offices. The notice on their web site that they are closed due to capacity being reached is completely false. It's been on there now for almost a week but they've not been open for almost two months. I've also griped about this on their facebook page because it was on there for a few days until we finally received an update on the forum that this was not really the case. Their tentative reopening is scheduled for tomorrow at 8'ish am with the understanding that there may be some to several bugs to work out and as usual there will be a cap of the number of orders that they will accept. In other words do not expect smooth sailing and also do expect to compete with hundreds or thousands of customers who've been waiting to order juice now for the last 2'ish months.

~BW

 

[paladinx]

Why did they take down the proper message about being closed than. Instead they throw up a message that says out of stock come back tomorrow at 8am.. If their not in business still why the hell are they putting up a message to make people wake up at 8am everyday to try and buy the juice they been waiting months for. . On top of this crap.. I heard people stole their credit cards.. and now it makes sense.. Someone stole mine around the time i bought from ave so im pretty sure it was their fault why someone charged 1000's of dollars on my card. They really need to get their .... straight and learn how to run a business. I don't mean to come off crude or nasty.. but seriously.. They are adding fuel to the fire by putting up a false message on their website. Its just going to piss people off even more.

 

[BentWookie]

Palandinx,

It was not Alien Visions that stole the credit card info. It was somehow obtained by non authorized entities from the payment processor which Alien Visions uses. Alien Visions does not actually collect and or store your credit card information.

As far as the messaging on the web site, like I said, I also griped about that one on their facebook page. It is now a moot point since they really do plan on opening tomorrow. If I had to imagine a response from them it would go something like this.

"Sorry for this inconvenience. We had a lot of activity and several projects going on at the same time. This was an oversight on our part and we did not intend to cause any undue hardships to our customers. We will be reopening on Monday June 3rd."

Still a little frustrating I agree but at this point I just want some juice

Why did they take down the proper message about being closed than. Instead they throw up a message that says out of stock come back tomorrow at 8am.. If their not in business still why the hell are they putting up a message to make people wake up at 8am everyday to try and buy the juice they been waiting months for. . On top of this crap.. I heard people stole their credit cards.. and now it makes sense.. Someone stole mine around the time i bought from ave so im pretty sure it was their fault why someone charged 1000's of dollars on my card. They really need to get their .... straight and learn how to run a business. I don't mean to come off crude or nasty.. but seriously.. They are adding fuel to the fire by putting up a false message on their website. Its just going to piss people off even more.

 

[DoogieTony]

Feel better now?

 

[Porphy]

The splash page with the errant "closed" message was my fault. I told my developer to make one and he did... I didn't tell him NOT to put it up... that's where the issue lay.

It'll go away once we open on Monday and should only be displayed after when we hit our order capacity and close. Right now though it is misleading and I apologize for that.

 

[Veezy]

should of read the threads before posting. the complaining of some users are getting quite old and annoying at this point.

 

[MonsterTKE]

It'll go away once we open on Monday and should only be displayed after when we hit our order capacity

When you get a minute can we talk about adding an open/closed API for your site? is-ave-open.info and the beta site realtime.is-ave-open.info would have much less an impact with a simple "echo json_encode(true/false)" depending on if the site was open.

As it is now I'm scraping the front page looking for "Closed For Today" and depending on how much of the site is active it may be hitting your database, its definitely sending way more data than I need, as its loading all of the site assets. Your /home.php page is also throwing a 503 error, unless it was designed that way it really shouldn't be.

 

[paladinx]

Veezy.. I never complained once about this company before or any other company.. This is something that has been going on now for many months.. I have been trying to buy juice from this company most of the year and I was able to actually put in ONE order. Before they closed down... everytime I went to purchase they were closed.. and then when they weren't closed the juice was out of stock.. than they were closed for good. I can understand why people are complaining. And its a good thing.. They should be happy people are complaining that means they WANT the products. If no one didn't like their juice than no one would be .....ing. I just hope when they relaunch they have everything fixed..

@bentwookie. I didn't think or accuse them of stealing it,, but whoever did it they are still responsible.. That is their business who they use for security and everything else.. I purchased from their site and my card was stolen.. I don't care who exactly did it.. the fact is i went to their site and it happened. That is enough to piss someone off because out of 9,000 tries to buy juice from these guys I was successful ONCE and that one time .. my .... gets stolen.. who wouldn't be ......?

 

[BentWookie]

Hi paladinx,

Sorry not implying that you were placing any blame. I was just explaining what actually was going on. I myself had 2 of my cards compromised. My card companies notified me right away and I never had to pay a cent. In my case I was lucky and AVE took good care of me. I am also not trying to tell you how to feel. Be ...... or happy. It is your right. Just stating the facts sir

~BW

Veezy.. I never complained once about this company before or any other company.. This is something that has been going on now for many months.. I have been trying to buy juice from this company most of the year and I was able to actually put in ONE order. Before they closed down... everytime I went to purchase they were closed.. and then when they weren't closed the juice was out of stock.. than they were closed for good. I can understand why people are complaining. And its a good thing.. They should be happy people are complaining that means they WANT the products. If no one didn't like their juice than no one would be .....ing. I just hope when they relaunch they have everything fixed..

@bentwookie. I didn't think or accuse them of stealing it,, but whoever did it they are still responsible.. That is their business who they use for security and everything else.. I purchased from their site and my card was stolen.. I don't care who exactly did it.. the fact is i went to their site and it happened. That is enough to piss someone off because out of 9,000 tries to buy juice from these guys I was successful ONCE and that one time .. my .... gets stolen.. who wouldn't be ......?

 

[fogMann]

Hey Ben,

I see you talked about a 25% discount elsewhere on ECF. I got on AVE today and added stuff to my cart and it didn't look like 25% off. The price for each 30ml bottle of BB and GJ averaged at $16.25. If there is a discount code, can you post it outside the site? Your site is slow, jammed, delayed due to traffic and I think I lost my cart while trying to find a code (although I expect it was toast anyway).

Glad to see the juices are flowing again.

Thanks!

 

[paladinx]

Bentwookie, no need to apologize.. you are right. I am not mad at your comment.. What you said is true.. I am just saying that I am still annoyed with them even though someone else broke into their credit services.. just for the fact that the only order i was able to place in like months that had to happen lol.

 

[Veezy]

totally understand. it's like getting 4th place. you made it to the finish line but no medal....wait what?? did not make any sense nor does it have any relevance to your situation LOL!!

 

[paladinx]

In a weird way that makes perfect sense to me.

 

[icemanx3]

I tried getting in at 8AM this morning and got OWNED...

ice

 

[plessdude]

Its really a simple issue here guys. Most businesses that expand from one or two people fail trying to get out of the initial stage. The issues isn't that they don't want to sell to every single person who wants to order. I am sure they do. I am sure they would like nothing more than to get to a point where they have enough people and the processes in place for them to take a step back and catch their breathe. They have an in demand product and if you try and expand too fast your margins shrink and you can actually go bankrupt trying to sell more. There are countless examples of companies that experience this phenomenon. MBA programs love to point this out and people a lot of time talking about this issue and analyzing how businesses fail when they sell too much to fast.

I don't know the ins and outs of running this type of business but I assume that they run into problems financing the inventory they need to keep going. If they are trying to grow and keep up through cash flow they are always going to be under the crunch. Either they secure a suitable line of credit to keep the business healthy and the margins large enough to fund bringing on additional labor and a steady flow of inventory or they limit supply the supply and focus on improving their margins. In my mind all they are missing is better communication. Thats a tough thing though when they are dealing with the uncertainty of building an ecommerce site. I am sure they needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the new site and they are going to face huge ongoing expenses keeping the site running and secure. Its not a good position to be in guys. I think we need to cut them a break. Big time. Yes its difficult and frustrating for us but I am sure that in time they will get to a point where the business gets healthy and this was all just a painful lesson. By the time things get back to normal they will have an MBA understanding of how to run a business.

 

[paladinx]

plessdude ... What you said is all true,, but thats what a business is all about. That is what every business has to face, big or small.. That is the whole point about running a business. Some people do it right and some don't. And when you aren't running your business right why shouldn't the consumers have a right to complain. I been looking to purchase juice from these guys for the whole year, and I was successful ONCE. And that one time my credit card info got stolen... That is unacceptable. I hope they hear the complaints and work towards improving everything when they get back.. and stop with the out of stock messages every single day

 

[plessdude]

plessdude ... What you said is all true,, but thats what a business is all about. That is what every business has to face, big or small.. That is the whole point about running a business. Some people do it right and some don't. And when you aren't running your business right why shouldn't the consumers have a right to complain. I been looking to purchase juice from these guys for the whole year, and I was successful ONCE. And that one time my credit card info got stolen... That is unacceptable. I hope they hear the complaints and work towards improving everything when they get back.. and stop with the out of stock messages every single day

I agree paladinx. It is really the lack of clear and concise communication that is there critical issue. They should be using their "Closed" page on their site to post a few words each day about whats going on. If they just started to under promise and over deliver people would begin to get behind them a bit more. Every customer should absolutely have the right to criticizes their business practices. I run a business where internet criticism can make or break my business daily. I use the negative critiques as a way to constantly improve my product and my service. A two person juice shop though isn't equipped just yet to handle the onslaught of issues these guys have faced. While I agree that they are making some fundamental mistakes I can understand the pressure they are under to get these things sorted out. Luckily for them they have a product that once things are back to normal people will continue to purchase. Hopefully when things get sorted out they will, as you have said, used this experience to fix their issues. Unfortunately you got burned big time which is totally unacceptable and I think you do have a right to be upset. Hopefully you were not out any money and the CC company reimbursed you. Its a big hassle when your card is compromised.