If I’m not bald today it’s because I sprained my wrist and couldn’t tear my hair out in handfuls. Trying to get this online shop put together has been one of the worst experiences of my life. I kept being presented with supposedly finished versions of the website and being encouraged to sign off on them. Far from being finished, there would be pages and pages of juvenile errors on each occasion. Errors that I had previously pointed out and was told had been corrected, hadn’t been. I’m not talking about intensely nested complexities; just links that went where they shouldn’t go or went nowhere at all, thumbnail graphics that were a disproportionate disgrace and automated emails that were gibberish.

All last week the storm was gathering and it burst on the Friday. I was reduced to demanding a full refund and making threatening legal noises. At that point, I would have cancelled and begun again with some other company with something approaching equanimity, because there seemed to be no end in sight, and there never could be, as the guy wouldn’t check his work and there’s no quality control. I wouldn’t have allowed them to keep a penny of my money, though, and I would have willingly spent three times as much in legal fees and court expenses to ensure that. I give good spite.

I suspect that a large part of the company’s problem is that they dispensed with the services of their good developers and replaced them with cheap labour, judging by the critters I’m dealing with, cranky, short on English and not over-burdened with talent. Be that as it may, last week’s email drama seems to have worked, though the proof of the pudding is in the eating and we’ll have to see whether they come up with anything edible. The first developer has been replaced with a more senior one and strict supervision is being applied. Of course they could tell me anything. I’m not there to see what actually happens. Anyway, they’ve got a week and then I’ll be sending out for guns and lawyers, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson.

I’m still not naming the company responsible. They insist on displaying their name on web sites they have created so, amusingly, they will name themselves if the project is completed. If it has to be cancelled there will be naming and shaming. You betcha!

By the way I did sprain my wrist. There were some mighty weeds growing in the hard-to-access area behind the shed. I got a bit gung-ho and went in there with a machete. And sprained my wrist. My hand and arm swelled alarmingly and the GP feared it might be more than a simple sprain, so I was sent on the 140-mile round trip to Accident & Emergency. Turned it’s just a sprain, so I have to try to do everything with my left hand as I’m wearing one of those aesthetically appealing splints on my right.

I’d have been OK if I hadn’t imagined that the stems of the weeds were the developer’s neck…

I find myself repeatedly apologising for the lack of activity in this blog, but there’s a good – or rather bad – reason for it. The creation of my retail website drags on and interminably on, involving me in a mountain of unnecessary work.

When I decided to move to online retail, I did my research, as one does. I wanted the best, almost regardless of cost. It’s costing me £1000.00 bar a handful of change. I wouldn’t mind that. I budgeted for the investment. What I do mind is that far from living up to their contract it appears that the company – or at least the developer I got dumped on me – will never finish the job.

It’s not that I’m being picky and insisting on the green being changed to blue, or that word be centred rather than left-aligned. I haven’t made a single style objection – I haven’t had time to even think of that, buried as I am in errors and incompetence.

Four times now, I have been presented with a link to a supposedly finished website. On each occasion it has had major flaws like broken links, links that go to the wrong place and thoroughly incompetent graphics handling. Clearly, the developer does not check his work and is severely limited in his skills. I suspect that he may not really be a developer in the true sense of the word. Time and again, I have to pore over the site, taking copious notes and thereby wasting time I can ill afford. On one occasion I submitted a closely written four-page document composed entirely of egregious faults.

I’m not naming names at this point. This weekend I finally blew my stack and ignoring the “developer”, I emailed the salesman who sold me the package, demanding that the situation be reviewed by senior management. I’ve had a positive response this morning. So, as I say, I’m not naming the culprits at this stage, but if I don’t get a 100% perfect site in quick order I most certainly will, everywhere and anywhere that I can.

Of course, the developers have a link to this blog…

The end is in sight – or the beginning – depending on how you look at it. I now have a working version of my online store though there are a few wrinkles still to be ironed out. Nice clean interface with little to distract from the pens. The navigation appears logical and intuitive.

The site will go live quite soon now, loaded with pens for your perusal, delectation and purchase if they are to your taste. When I traded in eBay I aimed for moderate prices, a high turnover and happy customers and that remains my intention. As I haven’t sold since April, everything, including this blog, has ground to a halt, and I’m looking forward to getting going again. The prospect of bringing in new – and hopefully unusual – stock to restore, write about here and sell is an exciting one.

I’ll keep you posted. It won’t be long now!

What d’you think about that? That’s not a repair you see very often! The surprising thing is that the piece of rough cord was actually pretty tightly tied on there. Seems that the sac held ink. Sadly, the ink that was used had more of the characteristics of gloss paint, so cleaning the section, feed and nib is still ongoing.

My apologies for the lack of updates recently. It’s pandemonium here. Completion of my retail site is, if not quite imminent, well within sight now. I have plenty of restored pens ready, but they all need to be photographed, the photos need edited, written descriptions have to be prepared for each pen – and so on it goes. It has quite worn out my assistant:

And I’m only marginally better myself.

You may have noticed that I’ve changed the theme for this blog.  I liked the old one better, I must say, but it didn’t have a search facility.  A couple of years ago that wouldn’t have mattered but as the posts proliferate it becomes harder to find what you’re looking for.   Of course, it would help if I kept up with the categorisation…

I gave the search bar a try or two.  It seems to be quite good.

 

Looking back over the last three years, my pen restorations average out at about five hundred a year. Each and every one of those pens is in some way appealing and I consider keeping many of them, though usually only fleetingly.

 

Though I don’t collect pens I have accumulated a few over the years. If they’re in this box, they’re mine.

 

I counted them just now and there’s 35 pens in there, plus one on my writing table. Depending on what your own situation is you may think 36 pens is a lot, but I’ve been interested in fountain pen for a very long time. Some of the pens in that box have been in my possession since the early seventies. Actually, given how many pens I handle, I think I’ve been admirably disciplined in keeping the accumulation small. There was a time I had many more when I collected Conway Stewarts. Eventually I realised that possession conferred no benefit on me and I sold off my collection.

So what do I have now? There are quite a few pens that just suit my hand very well, several of them being obliques with varying degrees of flexibility. A few were gifts and some are mementos of people I knew who are no longer around. There’s a few 1920s and 1930s Conway Stewarts that I couldn’t part with because they are such admirable pens. There are one or two extreme rarities like the Fattorini pen (http://wp.me/p17T6K-qN) and the Clipfill pen (http://wp.me/p17T6K-kn) because I know that such interesting and unusual pens will not come my way again.

Not all of those pens get used. There are about fifteen that do because I enjoy writing with them. I hang onto the rest for other reasons. Will my accumulation grow? Probably not. Yes, another pen or two might take my fancy but there are a few in that box that could go and not be missed. For the most part, though, it will remain the same. I like my motley crew of pens that have found their way into the bird box.

It’s amazing how the pens mount up if you stop selling but continue to restore…

As it turned out, Sunday’s sale of pens turned out not to be as disastrous as the previous two weeks. Not good, but not disastrous. A large part of the reason for that was because I went through all my sales items with them and demanded that they be made fully visible in the default listing as I’d paid for. They didn’t quite manage it – a few pens went for their opening bid or not much more – a superb Leverless 4261 for £24.00 and a BHR Waterman 52 for £26.00! Good bargains for the lucky buyers but not sustainable for me.

I’m going to take a holiday from sales while I get some costings for a retail site and wait to see if eBay returns to normality. They’re not very communicative, which doesn’t help. I have a backlog of pens to be restored so that should keep me out of trouble. The weather has improved after a cold and miserable spring so I might just take advantage of that for a while.

I’m selling pens in eBay this Sunday but I won’t be listing any more tomorrow. In fact, I have no idea when I’ll do so again – if ever.

I’ve had two weeks of catastrophic sales. Pens that would normally fetch £70.00, for instance, have been going for half that or less. This week’s sales are shaping up to be just as bad. I can’t carry on like that and I don’t intend to try!

Earlier in the week I was contacted by another high volume UK seller of restored pens in eBay. He had suffered the same sudden fall-off in sales returns and had begun to investigate. He found that most of his pens didn’t appear in the default listing in the US and Canada, despite his having paid a fee to ensure that they do. Instead, they appeared down the bottom of the listing in the “Items From International Sellers” section, which appears below various adverts and which nobody looks at anyway. Not only that: though he always accepts returns those which had been bumped down off the default lists were all marked “Returns Not Accepted”. This replicates what I have found, too. We contacted other high volume sellers; all were in the same boat. Basically, our pens are selling poorly because few people are seeing them. A proportion of those that do see the pens are misinformed that we won’t take them back under any circumstances, a good way of ensuring that the pens don’t sell.

Trying to get eBay to understand a problem is a torture that I’m sure Satan has copied for the deepest pits of Hell. They actually use bots for their Live Chat Support! The human beings they employ to answer the phones or emails are little better. That may sound like a very unpleasant thing to say but I speak as I find. If the concept has any complexity it’s just not going to be understood, and the support people start from the premise that nothing can be wrong with their system and the customer is always wrong. After an hour’s wearying conversation today, the support person I was talking to finally conceded that the problem was beyond her competence and agreed to “escalate” (awful word!) it to the technical staff. I asked to be transferred to the technical staff but no. The gods of eBay do not condescend to talk to those who put food on their tables and toilet paper in their loos.

I’m developing a seething, boiling hatred of supranational monopolies. Selling my pens on a retail website under my own control is looking very attractive right now.