Shotly Apology Email

[Spyder]

Opinions?

I have to give them credit for owning their faults and assuming responsibility, at the very least. That takes a lot of character. I was not part of the grab bag ordeal, so I was not personally effected. Just figured this would make one thread where people who were effected could vent and others can offer their opinions.
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First, we must warn you this is a bit long. We feel it is extremely important to communicate with you on many different aspects of Shotly. We have always believed in communicating every aspect of what is going on at Shotly even when it hurts a bit (not that we are perfect at it, but we certainly try). With that said, we hope all of you would take a few minutes to read this email. It has some important facts about the recent events (grab bag), plans going forward and some other notes that we feel are relevant.. . If you don’t care to read about the grab bag, scroll down to the Future of Shotly

The Grab Bag Fiasco
At the Shotly offices in Fort Worth, we enjoy the creative aspect of offering an innovative spin in the daily deal space. A couple weeks ago, we came up with the ‘grab bag’ concept. We loved it. We felt it would be a great way to give back to our loyal subscribers in honor of our 6th month of being in business.

The results of our market survey revealed that the grab bag would be a successful effort, so we put it in the deal queue.

There are essentially two ways to conduct a ‘grab-bag’ type of deal. The first way is to scale it to a small percentage of the participants to receive much more valuable deals (excess of $200, in this case). The others would receive gag-type prizes consisting of used clubs, old merchandise and other miscellaneous funny stuff. The other way is to provide items that have/had an MRSP of $25, regardless of Internet-scoured discounts.

We chose to blend the two models as we felt this would give our subscribers the biggest bang for their buck. In fact, we were a bit more generous than we initially intended to be as we wanted to make sure the largest amount of people got “gold” as possible. Since we don’t handle the fulfillment of any of our deals, the one thing that we hadn’t thoroughly researched was the price for shipping. So, we actually ended up financially upside down when all was done, but felt it was the right thing to do.

So – fast-forward to current day. All the grab bags have shipped out (finally) and 95% of everyone has received their items, a few stragglers are still waiting. This was such a massive under taking and for this reason we had some difficulty with the shipping process. Bottom line, it took a LOT longer and was a lot more expensive than we originally budgeted. In addition to this, we have received quite a bit of fallout from the prizes. As we have said since day one, we stand behind what we sent (just the nature of the deal that unfortunately that some people didn’t get what they had hoped for). We sincerely had the best interest of our subscribers in mind when we chose the prizes that we chose. We don’t inventory anything at Shotly so it certainly wasn’t an effort to ‘clear old stock’ as some have alluded to. Nor was it an attempt to shortchange anyone, in fact, quite the opposite. Several deal participants received ‘GOLD” like a full sets of Callaway X-22 Irons, R11 Drivers, several dozens of Pro V1x’s, golf bags and more. THAT’S what the deal is all about… “get GOLD” or get “OLD/MOLD”.

Where’s My Apology?
All that to say, we truly had the best intentions for this and along the way it just got so much attention (good and bad) that we just lost control of this thing. To those of you who have communicated your frustration we totally understand your beef, to those of you who have supported us even in our not so great moments, we owe you a HUGE thank you and to those of you who sent us dirty emails, we are sorry we got you that upset. This was NEVER our intention. We realize this email does not necessarily “fix things” but because of the volume of emails and calls, we figured this was a good place to start and hope you can pass this on to those who did buy. We are very sorry we have frustrated those of you we talked to and did not.

Shotly In The Future, What’s Our Plans?
Nonetheless, we have learned so much and unfortunately some of it the hard way (and not just from the grab bag). We are going to be a bit smarter about the way we do business here at Shotly and remove some of our biggest obstacles which quite honestly can be our own selves at times.

When we first started Shotly, we had (and still do) big aspirations for becoming a customer centric daily deal site and in the future full service online retailer. Well we did great for the first few months and but because of the explosive growth, we dropped the ball in a few areas. So, here's what we have decided to do to make some problems disappear but still accomplish our goals (and I might add we are pretty excited to get this going).

Above Was Explanation, Here Are The Real Plans
Shotly will only open for 3 days a month, every first Thursday at 12 AM CST to Sunday at 12 AM CST, that’s it, no more, no less. During those three days, we will post some of the most exciting deals, events and places to be. We are not going to list the specifics of the plans as of yet, but mark your calendar for November 3rd @ 12AM. You will receive an email a few days before the event to remind you and possible a few hints about what will be taking place.

During these times we are open, we will have the staff, supplies and resources to meet the demands, you can be assured of that. One thing that will NEVER happen again at Shotly is delays. Now with these new plans comes some changes to Shotly….. below are the details.

Starting Saturday night at around 10 PM we will be turning the shotly.com website to a landing page that is INVITATION ONLY! If you received this email you will receive an invitation code for you, but as well as a few others to send to who you like. These are limited and are not available to everyone. However, that means the Shotly phone number, deals website etc will all be turned off except for on the specific days of the event. The only thing that will be up will be a brief explanation along with a place to register, request an invite code and to enter an invite code.

I Still Have An Order I Haven’t Received?
No worries, you will get what you paid for. If you have not already talked with us about your details please be sure to email support@shotly.com with your Paypal Transaction ID, what you ordered and a good phone number to reach you. But to allow us to focus on making those three days great, Shotly will go dark for the rest of the month.

So that’s it folks. We welcome your comments, but ask that you not go crazy mean on us as we are real people that do read every email. We look forward to the new (and improved) future of Shotly.

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Edit :  One thing I can honestly sort of laugh at though, is the following statement pulled from the email.

Since we don’t handle the fulfillment of any of our deals, the one thing that we hadn’t thoroughly researched was the price for shipping. So, we actually ended up financially upside down when all was done, but felt it was the right thing to do.

This is obviously a sign of a business being ran by either one, or two individuals, who do not have much business experience. When something is put into marketing and research/development, every aspect of that particular "idea" needs to be projected into writing and facts. All aspects of both cost and profit should be the first two things looked at - and additionally, all factors that will influence the cost and/or profit. I didn't really understand this part.

The biggest part of the deal was the shipping, so how do you not consider the shipping? lol.

[Nole77]

I can of take from that email that they are doing on the side.  They thought they could do it on nights and weekends and handle the volume, but apparently they can't.  I still dislike that one of their reps specifically said the items would be worth $25.  That shows a problem with communication and when you're talking about a small operation to begin with, it's more than a little frightening.

I can appreciate what they're trying to do.  By switching to an "invitation" only model they're hoping to drive up interest and make the customer base small.  I don't know that it will be successful, considering the bad coverage they've received so far.

At the end of the day this was more of a feeler to try and see if they could salvage any business.  The intent is obviously not an apology.

[jamo]

I didn't take part in the grab bag so I don't know anything other than what people have been posting here in various threads and on their Facebook, but this email struck me as a little odd (I got one- must have given them my email address at some point). They couldn't handle the volume of the grab bag... so now they're only doing the website once in a while and expect a bunch of orders all at once to go smoothly? I guess I'm just confused.

[Spyder]

Originally Posted by Nole77

I can of take from that email that they are doing on the side.  They thought they could do it on nights and weekends and handle the volume, but apparently they can't.  I still dislike that one of their reps specifically said the items would be worth $25.  That shows a problem with communication and when you're talking about a small operation to begin with, it's more than a little frightening.

I can appreciate what they're trying to do.  By switching to an "invitation" only model they're hoping to drive up interest and make the customer base small.  I don't know that it will be successful, considering the bad coverage they've received so far.

At the end of the day this was more of a feeler to try and see if they could salvage any business.  The intent is obviously not an apology.

I definitely agree with everything that you said. There's not much of an apology to those who purchased the grab bag deal and were not satisfied. This is more of a "Hey, we still believe we're in the right, but since so many of you feel that you were wronged, we're no longer dealing with open customer service. Instead, we'll only keep around a smaller base of customers - and here is how we plan on doing that. [Insert plans to further cut a non-existent customer service department.]".

Jamo, they probably won't need to fulfill any orders unfortunately. I'm pretty sure this business model is set up for failure. I always wish anyone the best, but this is too out there to succeed.

[newtogolf]

It's obvious this is a home grown business that's being run during their main jobs non-business hours.  As a small business owner I can symphathize with the pains of getting a new business off the ground with limited time and financial resources.  They learned a hard lesson, one that probably cost them a good deal of their profits or personal income.  One other thing I hope they learned was to not disappear when their customers need them most.  If they had come forward earlier with a statement like this they may have saved themselves some nasty e-mails and charge backs.

It appears they did some real soul searching and realized the time required to run a business like this properly far exceeded what they had available and they made some tough decisions to come up with a new business model that works for them.  Time will tell if the Grab Bag fiasco caused too much fallout for them to recover from, but this e-mail admitting their mistakes was a very good start.  I wish them luck, the countrys economic recovery depends on guys like these to succeed.

[newtogolf]

You have to remember they probably have some legal concerns here as well, so any actual admittance of guilt would open them up to returns and potential litigation.  They said as much as they could in a public forum in an attempt to square things with the customers.

Originally Posted by Spyder

I definitely agree with everything that you said. There's not much of an apology to those who purchased the grab bag deal and were not satisfied. This is more of a "Hey, we still believe we're in the right, but since so many of you feel that you were wronged, we're no longer dealing with open customer service. Instead, we'll only keep around a smaller base of customers - and here is how we plan on doing that. [Insert plans to further cut a non-existent customer service department.]"

[xxsoultonesxx]

I had my card out and ready to order a couple of these grab bags and decided not to at the last minute. Happy with my decision.

[GJBenn85]

I don't consider it much of an apology and it only came about after they were publicly humiliated here, Facebook, and other sites.  It's a "I got caught" scenario in which they're now trying to save face without actually saving face.  If they want to redeem their reputation, they have not done a single thing to actually do so.  It's hollow in my opinion and I think there are countless lost customers.  They may as well revert to an invitation only structure because it will take a long time for Shotly customers to forget about the Grab Bag debacle.

[jamo]

They may as well revert to an invitation only structure because it will take a long time for Shotly customers to forget about the Grab Bag debacle.

Wow wow wow. This is the internet. It's called Grab Bag-gate. :-P

[NuclearMike]

I find it interesting that I received the e-mail too, but as a "Winner" I don't see any mention of the prizes on the original Shotly contest being scheduled for distribution.  It's as if that contest just fell through the cracks and unless they were being given the prizes to distribute by the vendors to raise their profile it meant another financial loss for the Shotly.  They then apparently decided, without explanation, to drop the contest and hope that we would just drop it as well.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by NuclearMike

I find it interesting that I received the e-mail too, but as a "Winner" I don't see any mention of the prizes on the original Shotly contest being scheduled for distribution.  It's as if that contest just fell through the cracks and unless they were being given the prizes to distribute by the vendors to raise their profile it meant another financial loss for the Shotly.  They then apparently decided, without explanation, to drop the contest and hope that we would just drop it as well.

To be clear, the contest is kind of independent. That email went out to all of their members - it was a mass, generic email - it wasn't sent to only contest participants. I wouldn't have expected them to mention the contest in that email.

[gnadolf]

Can you say Douche Bags!.  Now I hear they are stiffing their suppliers and not answering calls.  Even their phone line is dead and their personal facebook pages have been changed to not show their "web development" company that was behind Shotly.  These guys are fools who thought it was easy to trick everyone and got caught with their pants around each others ankles.  Jokers. That is the problem in the online golf world, every dick sitting in a room thinks he can create an internet business and only a few successfully have what it takes.

1SmartGolfer, GroupGolfer, 14 stix (now out of biz) Naileditgolf, do golf...dealadaygolfer...all joke sites with no revenue, no business plan. just a guy in his underwear trying to make $500 a month.

You are selling online and you failed to look into shipping?  Really????? #$#^&*

It's a joke.

[Spyder]

I wouldn't quite throw DoGolf and Naileditgolf in that category. I've never done business with them, but they're obviously more reputable thus far based on the golf community's feedback from current and past customers.

I did kind of call it though when I said Shotly was just performing a really shady marketing ploy by getting advertisement through TST. They were just "business dumb". People jumped to their defense wishing them the best and what not, but I'm sorry - I did not agree. When you take a customer's money, you better be damn sure you can provide the services that have been purchased and exceed expectation - period.

[gnadolf]

What is TST for?  As for the others, it is not about the sites, although I have seen unfovorable comments about just abotu any online business, rather it is understanding the model and whether selling a $20 shirt and making $4 is a legit biz.

[gnadolf]

all the negative comments have mysteriously left there Facebook page....jokers!