Loaded Commerce Community

The CRE Customer Service Team asked for my feedback and then didn't provide a way for me to provide it, see their note at the bottom of this post. I tried to reply to the e-mail and it bounced. So I'll post my feedback here.
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Dear CRE Customer Service Team:

I was intending to buy PCI Pro 6.4. I downloaded the PCI CE Shopping Cart and installed it and the darn thing is covered with CRE ads and is in my mind completely unusable without paying someone to add a template. I had hoped to use the CE Shopping Cart for a short time and then upgrading. Here is a list of the other reasons why I have not bought PCI Pro 6.4:

1. The PCI Pro 6.4 demo seems to be loaded with CRE ads just like PCI CE.

2. It seems that buying PCI Pro 6.4 is just the beginning what is needed to have a web store that ecommerce ready. My guess is that one would need to spend about $1,000 to have a complete store and let's not forget the monthly fees.

3. The stock template does seem to allow the uploading of a logo and is unusable, why pay for something you can't use without paying for additional mods.

4. I think I would want to use Paypal as my merchant account to start; it does not appear that I can do that.

5. I don't like any of the CRE Loaded templates I've seen on the three websites displaying such.

6. I can't tell how many product pictures can be uploaded for each
product and if the pictures can be magnified by shoppers shopping to get a better look at the products.

I'm looking for an expensive way to start a web based retail business. I have found an inexpensive reliable host for my domain. I had hoped that CRE Loaded would my ecommerce solution. Unless you can convince me otherwise I'll stick with eBay and Craig's list. Thanks for listening.

Best regards,
L.A. "Tony" Hardesty
"PLAY BIG."

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From: CRE@br501i.chainreactionservers.com
[mailto:CRE@br501i.chainreactionservers.com]
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 2:44 PM
To: L.A. Tony Hardesty
Subject: Inquiry from CRE Loaded



Login to your account here: (https://www.creloaded.com/account.php)
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Dear L.A. "Tony",

Thank you for stopping by CRE Loaded and considering us for your purchase.
We noticed that during a visit to our store you placed the following item(s) in your shopping cart, but did not complete the transaction.

Shopping Cart Contents:

1 x CRE Loaded PCI Pro 6.4 - PCI Pro (1 Domain - Full)
(http://www.creloaded.com/product_info.p ... cts_id=291)

We are always interested in knowing what happened and if there was a reason that you decided not to purchase at this time. If you could be so kind as to let us know if you had any issues or concerns, we would appreciate it. We are asking for feedback from you and others as to how we can help make your experience at CRE Loaded better.

PLEASE NOTE:
If you believe you completed your purchase and are wondering why it was not delivered, this email is an indication that your order was NOT completed, and that you have NOT been charged! Please return to the store in order to complete your order.

Our apologies if you already completed your purchase, we try not to send these messages in those cases, but sometimes it is hard for us to tell depending on individual circumstances.

Again, thank you for your time and consideration in helping us improve the CRE Loaded website.

Sincerely,

CRE Customer Service Team
http://www.creloaded.com/

I have no connection to CRE loaded or anyone that runs it - I am just a small scale user like you. I just wanted to chime in here to say that I think perhaps you may not have given things a fair chance - or have enough computer experience to know how to make the CRE cart work for you. I am a small store owner, and have run a cre loaded site for several years with limited expense, and limited knowledge of coding or backend computer stuff. When I launched my first site I searched around, and found a designer who charged reasonable rates, and got my first site up and running for me for under $500. The back end was pretty quick to learn, and very user friendly in my opinion - and the cart was a steady performer for over 3 years for me.

My original site disappeared when my host pulled a disappearing act and due to my limited understanding of what it meant to truly back things up I lost everything. I decided to try to learn to install and set up the cart on my own. It's only been a few weeks, but after a bit of trial and error I have the stock template looking decent - certainly functional - and most of those changes have just been made via the control panel, not changing code. Buying a template was more trouble than it was worth - I figured that out the hard way unfortunately - and I'm back to using the original.

The stock template does allow for uploading a logo - it is under branding manager.

You can ad up to 6 product images per product, and pop up images for each, using the catalog manager. When you add the product the boxes are all a part of the form.

Did you read the free "users manual" which can be found here? - http://www.creloaded.com/pages.php?CDpa ... j8rcorje04 If you missed that then of course you were frustrated. Note to CRE developer people - I would have loved to have a post here in the forums that pointed me directly to this manual from the start - as a non tech type I never would have thought a users manual would be named something like "documentation." A thread with a nice collection of steps to follow for the total novice would be a great addition to these forums, as would some advice about how to change the look of things by turning different buttons on and off (maybe with some screen shots showing different looks using the stock system). If that exsists my apologies - I have yet to stumble upon it. Not eveyone is fluent in tech speak and answers here tend to be along those lines which does seem overwhelming.

I also don't think that three unobtrusive adds in the footer equates being "loaded" with ads. Free fits my budget at the moment - I'll deal with the three adds.

If you aren't willing to dig around a bit you aren't going to get very far with any of the cart systems out there - they all have a learning curve. CREs is not huge though - and the cart is indeed powerful once you figure things out.

Hey beadedthings:

Thanks so much for replying to my post. You comments are greatly appreciated. I'll give CRE Loaded PCI Pro 6.4 a much closer look.

I did download and install CRE Loaded PCI CE 6.4 Full Package. Its running on my site now. Maybe we can chat online in the near future.

Best regards,
L.A. "Tony" Hardesty
"PLAY BIG."

I just want to say thanks to both beadedthings and tonyhardesty ( for raising ques. ) . I am a new store owner and would be customer , before buying i was checking the forum to see what are the difficulties faced and how good will the PCI Pro for me , thankyou so much