Channel Advisor The so-called Small Business Helper that tramples all over you and caused us to reduce our workforce or go bust Internet

Channel Advisor (CA from here on in) contacted us in June 2014.  They said they were looking to partner with a bead supplier in the UK and that we fit the bill perfectly.  They told us a little about their product but we made it clear we already use a similar sales platform in the UK called Channel Grabber.

We have been selling on eBay (11 sites) and Amazon (7 sites) for many years so did not need CA to help us get onto these market places.  However, CA pointed out that they have exclusive access to 10 additional market places such as Mercado Libre, Trade.Me, Buy.com, New Egg, Tesco etc.  

We are a very ambitious company looking to always expand and so we signed a 1 year contract, at over $15K(!) for the year.  The additional sales from these 10 new market places would cover this cost and hopefully make us some extra revenue.

This is where it all went horribly wrong! ....

We applied for Trade.me in New Zealand who within 2 days rejected us since their eligibility criteria for international sellers is that you have to have been selling $50K per month on eBay Australia for the last 6 months.  We are WAY off those sort of levels, but CA had failed to mention this before.

Alarm bells started ringing!

We then asked CA to tell us about the eligibility criteria of the other 9 market places.  Prior to signing the contract, the sales guy had said "Don't worry about it mate, you will be fine.  No problem getting accepted".  It turns out that the elgibility criteria was as follows:

• Trade.me - $50K per month sales required on eBay Australia
• New Egg - Technology only
• Mercado Libre - need to form a Brazilian company!
• Redoute - Clothes and fashion only
• The other 6 US marketplaces require a US return address

The last one was the killer since we are a small UK company and have no address or indeed any physical presence in the US.

Therefore we were ineligible for all 10 marketplaces :(

Okay, not to panic I thought.  Sure we'd wasted some time on setting up data, and also had 2 training calls which I expected to still have to pay for.  But there would be no problem cancelling this service since it was not fit for purpose and we had clearly been mis-sold it - at no point did CA make any of the eligibility criteria clear prior to signing the contract.

Our early pleas fell on deaf ears - in fact the Head of UK Sales told us it was tough since we had signed the contract.  So we hunted down the CEO of the company who instantly palmed us off to one of his VPs.  Shockingly, we got the same answer from him.

"You signed the contract and it is enforceable".

So, CA are happy for us not have a worthwhile product to use and still charge us over $15K for the privilidge.  They are a money-grabbing organization who really do not care about helping a small business. We have had to lose a member of staff to cover those costs.  Not a great thing to have to do during recession.

The moral of this story is please make sure you do due diligence before signing a contract with Channel Advisor because once they have you, the will take your money regardless.