People who Organize Group Orders
I have seen many group orders and I personally organize group orders before and I am still kind of doing it right now. And this is just my rant on people who organize group orders.
Responsibility & The Service Spirit
You are not just handling your own items and money, you are handling other people’s. That is a trust and responsibility placed on your shoulder, hence you should do your best to ensure that the trust is a well-placed faith. You have to ensure that you convey and give the correct orders and specifications to the sellers, no matter how tedious such a job would be. It is your responsibility to inform the people joining your group orders of any updates you receive from the suppliers or sellers. Be it shipment or out of stock items. It is important to inform the buyers as soon as you can get hold of the buyers.
Not only do you have to be responsible to the buyers, you have to be responsible to the seller. You are representing the seller in a way since you act as the communication link between the seller and the buyers. You must convey the seller’s message to the buyers correctly. If the seller has shipped out the items, for god’s sake tell your buyers. If the items will be shipped to another venue before shipping to you, jolly well tell the buyers as well. Don’t make people think that the things go directly to you because when there is a transit made, things can go wrong. If the items come, and there are wrong or missing items, you should always inform your buyers of such a problem and ensure them that you will contact the seller regarding this. And you jolly well do that. Missing items or wrong items, please tell the seller and something can be worked out. Either a refund or a replacement or other solutions, depending on whose fault it is for such problems. It could be you really missed out the orders when giving the sellers the list or it could be the seller who overlooked things. Either way, you have to ensure that you give the correct reason and the best solution for your buyer. You cannot just tell the buyers that the seller refuse to refund/replace/do anything regarding the problem and shove the mistake to the poor seller who is not given a chance to explain. In this way, you are not only lying to your costumers and playing with their trust, you are tarnishing the seller’s reputation and make others think that the seller is irresponsible (I have a friend who will NOT order from a seller even though I have personally assured her the responsibility of the seller who is also my friend. This is because she joined another group order conducted by the other person and she received wrong items and the other person claimed that the seller does not entertain refunds/replacements which is untrue).
Well, it is true that you are indeed doing people a favour for conducting the group order if you are not earning anything from it. However, it does not mean you can dictate and play with the buyers. You can be strict with your rules to make your job easier, but stop thinking everyone owes you something. If you can’t stand doing work without getting paid (well, who knows how much you are earning since you set the rules), place a service charge. If you don’t want to place a service charge (or you already placed and still feel imbalanced about this whole thing) and yet you keep complaining about all the work you have to do while conducting the group order, don’t conduct because you have no spirit of service. Group order is a service after all. If you can’t handle that, just don’t conduct for everyone’s sake.
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