Hey there everyone; first off I want to sincerely apologize for the delays and lack of communication there has been from me in the last few months. The back order situation is causing me a great deal of stress as I have been working as hard as I can to get orders prepared and sent out. I am very unhappy with the current status as I had never wanted to make my customers wait so long.
Starting this project has been a trying experience and there has been a very steep learning curve for me as I attempt to scale up to the demand I have been receiving. The business world is hard hitting and fast moving, and I entered in to this project pretty green. I can see now that I let myself bite off more than I could chew and, that demand is not going to slow down to let me catch up. But I want everyone to know that my intentions were and still are to provide a great community service.
Spoutti is correct; I have been the sole originator of these batteries since the inception of the project. I import the batteries from reliable suppliers and assemble them myself in-house. Taking money at the time of order was necessary to bootstrap the project, as I did not have the resources to fund a battery order large enough to bring the prices down to where they need to be. However, anyone who has purchased but not had their order filled is eligible for an immediate, no-questions asked refund. While I understand that this is less than satisfactory, it's the way it has to be until we switch over distribution (more on that later).
While this system allows me to have complete control over QC, it makes me the main bottleneck and I just don't think thats going to work going forwards. Having to handle production, filling orders and customer service has lead to all three of these pillars being neglected and that simply cannot continue. While I am still in the process of working through some of these issues, I want to be transparent and let you all know what I am doing to rectify the current situation.
RE: Stock Issues
Over the past few weeks I have been working with a company to accelerate our ability to fill orders. I hesitate to call it outsourcing; as I will still do in house QC but there are many advantages to having a larger, more professional company handle production. I have been working with this company for several months now and I am confident in their reliability and quality. The HC packs are being made my specifications and will meet all standards set by my hand made packs. I will also be reintroducing the SC packs with a capacity of around 2800mAh. At the moment, I am waiting for the first production run to arrive, which is expected to take 2 - 3 weeks.
In the meantime normal production is continuing and I will be filling as many orders as I can over the next few weeks from our current stock.
RE: Distribution
At the same time, I have been working closely with a well respected vaporizer retailer to offer batteries for sale through their establishment. This will allow an efficient, experienced business to be handling orders, instead of all orders needing to be filled by myself. This will also change the way the order process works, as the batteries will be stocked by the distributor at the time of purchase as opposed to the current system.
RE: Customer Service
I do my best to respond to every email, message and PM that I receive from everyone, but there is a constant influx of requests and sometimes I take a while until I can get to it. To make matters worse, some email providers have started marking mail from some of my addresses as spam, which is making it difficult to correspond with some customers.
If you have had issues getting in contact me via email or the contact form on the site, please reach out to me again through FC or by emailing sales at vapepower dot ca as opposed to my GMX email.
Once production and distribution are taken over I will have a great deal more time that I can focus to customer service. I will do my best to get back to everyone as quickly as possible, but I appreciate your patience as I work through everything.
In conclusion, I want to apologize for the lack of organization, general naiveté and growing pains that I have experienced so far. I want to provide the best possible service that I can, and the current state of things has me deeply unsatisfied. Please know that I am working as hard as I can to move forward, and I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for how understanding and patient everyone has been in face of these issues.