Purchased Mail Order Manager

I started this blog because I wanted people to know about my experience with Dydacomp, the maker of the order management software system, Mail Order Manager, or (MOM). DydaComp is much larger than my company, more organized than my company and has much more resources (financially and legally) at its disposal than my company. Once you read the following text you will see that my company is at the point where it does not have a voice. This blog is my company's voice. If you have any questions feel free to contact me through this blog or through my website, which is linked to in the next paragraph. In no way am I saying that our experiences with Mail Order Manager are typical. MOM must work well for other companies or other compnaies would not be using it.

We own a small business called Distinctive Decor, www.distinctive-decor.com and have 10 employees. We started our business on the web in 1999, and most of our revenues come from our website. We nurture a boutique-like shop where customer service is the first priority. We believe in being honest with people and accepting returns with a smile. We were using OrderMotion as our order management system and wanted a less expensive way to manage our website and storefront orders, make our inventory process quicker and get better reporting capabilities.

No order management software is perfect; we knew that going in. We did our research and evaluated a number of different programs. Mail Order Manager fit what we were looking for and it looked really clean; so we ordered their trial kit. The trial version looked great and operated smoothly. MOM was going to cost us less money in the long run over OrderMotion, offered better reporting, was an in-house solution (OrderMotion is web-based) and they had everything nicely bundled together. For example, they would provide at a cost to me, professional looking invoices and packing sheets. MOM was also was set up for bar coding and scanning -- something that would help us save time when doing inventory and save time with checkouts in our storefront. We were very excited with the trial demo and ran a few mock orders through the queues to see how the system worked. It was smooth as silk, baby! We were pumped.

In September of 2008 we purchased MOM with a few plug-ins for around $13,000. MOM had a 30 day return window. MOM's implementation team assured us that we would be up and running before the fourth quarter, which is our busiest time of the year. I want to make a side note here. If you ever want to upgrade or change your order management software. Never do it before your peak season. I feel really stupid for doing this.

After two months of integration, we had to go live with MOM. I needed my investment to start paying off. We decided to go live on November 6, 2008. Integration was not completely done and what was done was done sloppily. We had to import around 50,000 old orders and OrderMotion did not make it easy for them. We were very excited that this program was going to make our life much easier and help our business run smoother. That did not happen. We experienced numerous crashes, errors and database corruptions. The system created bogus tracking numbers for our packages, too. We were losing data and were scared to death our business would crumble under the stress of increased order frequency. Finally I had enough. I asked for my money back. I could not have a system behaving this way in peak season. I was told to fly a kite. My return widow had lapsed.

DydaComp, the parent company of MOM is suave, persuasive and savvy. They say they have a 30 day return window but you better read the fine print. Here is what the fine print says: to return the program back to DydaComp you must notify them, get an RMA and the program disk cannot be opened. There is a restocking fee of 25% within 15 days of purchase. There's a 50% restocking fee for returns between 16 and 30 days of shipment. Beyond the 30 day window, no refunds will be processed. If you want to take legal action, you will have to do it in New Jersey--where DydaComp is domiciled. New Jersey attorneys are expensive; I hear.

What were we to do? We had an expensive program that was not working for us. Implementation took MOM 60 days to partially complete and it was sloppily done. They essentially ate up our return window with implementation time. A fact of which I accused them before the 30 day window was to expire. We could not use the program with our data in it until 60 days into the purchase. We were out of luck. They would not give my money back. The only option we had was to file a chargeback or dispute with our credit card company--Bank of America.

To make a long story short (I will flesh out all the problems that we had in other posts) here we are seven months later from the time we started the dispute process and Bank of America chose DydaComp's side. I have a $13,000 program in which I have no confidence. Don't get me wrong, DydaComp is a big company, and a lot of companies like mine use their software. It must work for some businesses.

I am between a rock and a hard place. I refuse to flush $13,000 down the toilet. I have swallowed my pride and asked MOM to help me get their program working like it should....I have yet to hear from them.