Customer emails start coming. “I cannot access ByteStand this morning, its asking me to re-subscribe”. Huh? And another, “Why is the app asking for my info again? I’ve already put it in.” Wha?
After a couple more emails I get in touch with Nafaa. “Nafaa, why are these folks getting asked for their credentials again? What’s wrong? Can you look this person up please?”
Nafaa jumps on it quickly , and just as quick gets back to me. “This is odd, I can’t find them in the database. I roll my eyes, “Come on man, this is a paying customer. I know they are in there.” Exasperation growing.
Nafaa replies, “No, Todd, they aren’t in there. Something is wrong.” I ask Nafaa to investigate further, and he comes back to me. “Todd, there is no one in the database, no customers at all.”
This HAS to be a mistake, we have over 200 downloads at this point, there is no way that the database is empty. I ask Roman, my sys admin, to take a look. He made some updates over the weekend, and may have forgotten something. I know we are backing up the database daily, so there really shouldn’t be a problem. I’m frustrated, but not concerned. That is until Roman comes back to me and says we have no database.
That’s impossible, we have backups. Just restore from a backup. Roman replies, “I don’t know how.”
F*ck me. This cannot be happening, the guy I hired to keep a careful eye on my servers, watching over them like a new mother, tucking them in at night and waking them up refreshed the next day has just told me that basically he went out drinking and forget his baby somewhere downtown. Holy shit.
My frustration has turned into complete dread, the pebble in my stomach has turned into Mt. Everest, and I just want to cry. We are brand new, everything is just starting to click, we have paying customers and now they all have to start over. How am I going to let everyone know? How am I going to get their money back? Should I just shut down? How in the world am I going to get through this?
I have no idea.
Amazon Aggregators Could Make You Wealthy
If your vision for your ecommerce business involves getting bought up, you’re in luck. As we covered in a recent post, groups of ecommerce investors known as “Amazon aggregators” are acquiring profitable ecommerce operations and scaling them into digital superstores.
Changes are coming to Shopify’s plans and features
Starting January 1, 2023, stores on the Shopify Starter and Basic plans will no longer be able to request access to the Carrier Service API (Carrier Calculated Shipping).
This removes the option to request access by:
Transitioning to annual billing
Paying an additional monthly fee
Amazon Blank Box Program for Shopify
There’s a HUGE learning curve when you’re first setting up an online store. You can spend 38 million hours Googling this stuff. Or you can ask a magical genie to help you get setup.
How to Reverse Engineer Your Shopify Store for Guaranteed Traffic
Most ecommerce businesses fail because they can’t get enough traffic to their stores. They focus on having the coolest products, forgetting the most important part – the buyers!
ByteStand Success: Enerskin, Makers of FDA Approved Compression Gear
This week’s ByteStand Success interview features Enerskin, a high tech company featured in Runner’s World and Vogue for their patented compression gear made for elite athletes and sports enthusiasts.
Why Our FBA Shipping App is Better Than Shopify’s Built In Fulfillment by Amazon Integration
At least a couple of times a week, I turn into a huge dork who gets super excited about explaining the multitude of ways that our app is better than Shopify’s built-in Fulfillment by Amazon integration.
