Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Bad business

Commitment – is it a dirty word?

I don’t believe it is but there seems to be a wave of people who work for themselves that lack a dedication to commitment.  I have no idea why.

The way I see it is that if you are providing a service to consumers (clients) then your word should hold and you should commit to work that is booked in, whether on your own premises or onsite with a client.

While I know that this applies to other industries, at this stage I’m talking about the Virtual Assistant industry.  Often I’ve heard from other VAs or clients when a VA who committed to take on a role, just didn’t deliver the work on time, or didn’t respond to emails or phone calls, or simply seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.  What is wrong with people and why do they feel that because it’s ‘their business’ they don’t have to commit?  Before too long word will get around (and it does) and that person (VA or other trade/service supplier) won’t be able to get new clients.

While I appreciate that the main reason for VAs becoming a VA is to be able to work at/from home and be present for family, and therefore there can be situations arising that prevents us to turn up at appointments, or complete a job, it is important, where possible, to contact the client and advise what is happening and if possible, seek another VA to complete the job/role.  Don’t leave the client (even if that client is another VA you’re subbing to) in the dark. Keep them informed and do what you can to assist in the situation that has now arisen.

While it is true that we, as VAs, are no longer employees, and are self-employed, we still have a commitment to those we provide a service for – just as we did when we were in a job.  If you had to ring in to let people know you weren’t going to be in for the day, the same should apply to a client if there is an expectation that you were going to attend an event on their behalf, or get something completed on a particular day.

Making a commitment means you have made a promise – don’t become known for breaking promises.

Call me a snob, but…

If someone sends me an email (unsolicited) promoting their products and expecting some interest and hopefully a sale, wouldn’t it be in their business interests to sign off their name properly, add their business name (if they have one), include contact details (other than a generic email) and perhaps even a website?

I mean, if they’re in business, promoting to people online, wouldn’t it make sense to make the best possible use of their time with their email to encourage people to do business with them? After all, if I met them somewhere and they handed me a card with just their name on it, it wouldn’t mean much would it?

Maybe I’m a snob but I would prefer to do business with people online, who send me sales information emails unsolicited if they gave me something to work with. Otherwise I have no idea who they are, or how good they might be or how good their product is.  I’m just saying…

P.S. I’m not asking people to start spamming me – I’m just pointing out that sometimes what appears to be a genuine one-off email looking for business is spoilt because the sender didn’t think it through.

Special offers for Virtual Assistants and their clients

You may remember my mention recently of a ‘sick scam‘ where an affiliate was processing orders using stolen credit cards on my shopping cart on this site.  Not a nice thing to happen and I’m still getting things sorted and processing refunds as people contact me. I can say the bank hasn’t been as helpful as I would have hoped, given that I’m not the perpetrator but a victim too, but that’s another story.

At any rate, I’m working hard to recoup lost funds, cover refunds and pay additional fees so have decided to set up a couple of special offers to help speed things up for me.  And that means you, my reader, get to benefit and anyone else you’d like to tell about it.

If you, or someone you know, would like to become a Virtual Assistant, they can participate in the 10 week VA Trainer course, and become a member of our VA Directory at a reduced rate.

Or, perhaps you, or someone you know, are needing a website with webhosting and control of the site yourself? I can provide you with a year’s webhosting and WordPress installation with site set up at a reduced rate. Contact me for more details.

Keep a watch on my blog for further offers.

Sign off your emails!

This is a message for anyone in business – Virtual Assistants, their clients and others.  Please sign off your emails properly. Even if you have an existing relationship with someone you’re emailing, it still makes sense to use your signature.

Why? Because not everyone remembers your phone number off by heart, or has it in their database, or knows what your website is (especially if your email address does not reflect your business website address), your fax number or whatever.

Sometimes I just want to pick up the phone straight away to ring someone and their number is not there in front of me and even if I go through several past emails, often I don’t find the phone number.  I have to google them to find their website to get the phone number. What a waste of time.

Sometimes I want to pass on details of someone to someone else – how much easier that would be if it was there in a signature block for me to copy and paste and then forward on.

Think how more often you might get click throughs to your website if that address was included in your signature block. Come to think of it, I had a photography forum email me last week saying I hadn’t been there for awhile and I was missed, please come back.  And yet, they did not include their domain address at the end of the email, and nor did their email reflect the website address.  Lost opportunity.

Sick scam

I’ve been the victim of a very sick scam. I really don’t understand why or what.  But I wanted to share it with you so you can be wary, in case it happens to you.

Middle of July a new affiliate signed up. Nothing unusual about that. I get affiliates signing up with my site regularly.  However, this affiliate began generating a lot of sales quite quickly.  The first I knew of it was when I suddenly started getting orders for my book “Worth More Than Rubies”. I sell copies here and there, but never usually a lot in a short time period.  I checked the sales records online and found they were coming via this new affiliate so I contacted them to find out what they were doing. They advised they were promoting via Facebook and Twitter (actually they said they were spamming and I told them that’s not what they should be doing but I assumed they were joking).  I contacted several of the purchasers just to confirm the order – I wanted to make sure all was above board.  They each responded thank you and looking forward to getting my book.

This took place for a fortnight and I dutifully purchased postpaks, overseas postage (because most of the orders were overseas) and sent the books off. Then early last week a lady contacted me to find out why I’d sent her my book with a payment slip. She hadn’t ordered it at all and the email address on the slip was not hers.  I got contacted two days later by another with a similar story.   I contacted my payment gateway and the fraud dept of my merchant bank and they began to investigate. Yes, a number of the orders placed over the past fortnight were fraudulent.

I’m now going through the process of having to refund the fees I’ve received and asking for the books to be sent back, but I understand if people don’t want to do that.  I’m out of pocket for merchant fees, postpaks, overseas and local postage, plus the refund fees I now have to pay refunding everyone.  Because I can’t be sure that all the purchases in the past fortnight were fraudulent (I know some weren’t) I’ve written a letter to everyone outlining what has taken place and what they need to do. I’ve also requested they don’t get their bank to do a chargeback as I get charged $25.00 per chargeback for something I didn’t do.  That will double the amount of money I’ll have to pay back!

I know that everyone whose cards were used are victims in this – the cards were stolen, and I am also a victim in this. It seems a very mean thing to do.  And I don’t understand what the perpetrators get from it – ordering something they’re not going to receive using stolen credit cards? The fraud dept guy told me that they’re most likely testing the cards with small purchases before making larger ones for things they want to get.

Whatever’s going on, I’m not alone. I get my shopping delivered by Coles fortnightly and the delivery guy told me last week that they’ve had the same thing happening.  Someone placing orders with stolen credit cards and having them delivered to people who didn’t make the orders.

If you have a shopping cart on your site, monitor the orders coming through and if you start to get a lot of orders in a short time, and it seems unusual to you, investigate it and don’t send out the products in a hurry.  Better they’re sent late rather than ending up with the problem I currently have.

Addendum:  Months later I found out that the person processing the stolen cards was also a victim. She had been engaged to process orders and her payment was the affiliate fees she received.  I’d been communicating with US Police authorities and it seems that a Chinese group had set up an elaborate scheme, engaging Chinese living in other countries (in this case the US) to operate ‘businesses’ online, processing orders for people.   This will explain the affiliate’s response to me when I demanded my affiliate fee back through Paypal. I got called some really awful names and told I was being unethical.