As David Bowie once lamented in his hit song, “Changes”, we’re making a few improvements to our business model that are all aimed at making our shopping experience better and faster, plus more in tune with present e-commerce trends. For starters, we re-implemented our Live Chat feature, which can be found in the lower right hand portion of the screen. So, you can now talk to a live representative during normal business hours as well as during our expanded business hours throughout the busy holiday season.
Second, we have switched from Stamps.com to Pitney Bowes’ SendPro system, which enables us to compare rates across the three major carriers (USPS, FedEx and UPS) in real-time. Based upon the weight of the parcel and the shipping destination, it is now entirely possible we may be using either FedEx or UPS as opposed to relying completely on the USPS for our outbound shipping needs.
Third, Volusion, our e-commerce platform that hosts The Motor Pool site, is and plans to make some important changes in its next major roll out that will seamlessly permit us to host listings on all of the major marketplace sites (Ebay, Amazon and Walmart, to name a few) and maintain a simple-to-use stock balancing software system that is aimed at keeping our in-stock positions correct and up-to-date across all retail channels. We will discuss this at greater length as we become more familiar and comfortable with this new functionality.