Ozcart Ecommerce acquisition - new ownership

  • Wednesday, 11th April, 2018
  • 18:11pm
Hi everyone,

My name is Ramsey Khalaf and I am happy to announce that I have acquired Ozcart Ecommerce from Brooke Hardwick.
I would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to read the following.

I am a website specialist and always strive to improve existing systems. Aside from my enthusiasm for technology and prompt, friendly customer service (I really do believe in that!), I have every intention to continue leading Ozcart properly.

First, I would like to apologize in advance for any slower than usual client support response time, as I will need some time to adjust to the system, the shopping cart, and everything else, so please forgive me if I take longer to answer any one of you.

I am located in Canada. What does that mean for all of you in lovely (and warm) Australia? Well, we pledge allegiance to the same Queen and have different accents, but apart from that we should be okay :). On a serious note, while we live in different time zones, I'm still available from 8 am to 8 pm EST (Sunday to Friday) and will aim to be there for you during your time.

You may be wondering about my plan, so I would like to share some highlights with you:
  1. I am happy with the current pricing and am looking to eventually add an extra lower cost plan to help smaller businesses. For now, there's only one small change, see point 2.

  2. Currency. I believe in being transparent (not physically but in communication :) ), there has been a change of currency from AUD to Canadian dollars (CAD). This shouldn't affect you much as our currencies are very similar (100 CAD = ~ 102 AUD). This means that if you are paying 49 AUD, your new total will be about 50 AUD. Around a dollar extra per month. If you have strong objections about this, please let me know as soon as possible.​ I did not want to do this but there's over a thousand dollars of fees that I must pay per year just for receiving AUD. This makes it between 12-24 AUD more per year for you. Moreover, as a bonus, most probably in the next months, I will be revising the yearly SSL price and reduce that. So, in the end, you may not be paying anything extra (or at least it's only a very small amount of a few dollars more per year). In the long term, I may add the ability for clients to pay with a different currency (not a certain plan for now).
     
  3. The payment gateway that is currently in use will have to change as I am not a resident of Australia. Nevertheless, the one that I'll be using, Stripe, should have migrated your current payment setup successfully. So far it is working well. Most will not have to do anything. Some, who are not paying monthly but instead yearly, along with those who are not on recurring billing (automatic credit card billing), you will probably have to enter your payment information. We cannot accept direct bank transfer at this time. I will explore to possibility in the long run as there are online services for wire transfer, for free, like XE Money Transfer, but it is a manual process.

  4. I am considering to reinstate e-mail hosting, but bear with me as I find the best solution because I would like to avoid having your e-mails blocked (it seems to be an issue with cPanel email). This is for the medium to long term and not necessarily for the moment. I would still suggest you set up your email with Microsoft Office 365 for Business or G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) and ask us to add your MX records (we'll happily do so) than to use cPanel email as it's not the most reliable system. That way, you'll get your domain name in your email and use a service like Microsoft's or Google's, which are very reliable, high quality, and easily accessible from any computer with Internet.
     
  5. Improve and create themes for Ozcart. I also own a WordPress themes shop (Organized Themes) so I love themes. It will take some time for this part though as it's not urgent, for now.

  6. Please note that Ozcart's URL has changed from ozcart.com to ozcart.com. We have added a re-direct from the .com.au to the new .com to ensure that you will find our website for the next year. This change was necessary as I am not a resident of Australia in order to own a .com.au. This does not affect you in any way. You can use your .com.au and renew it without an issue. I still have many URL changes to do so you may find some broken links here and there. You could tell me about them, if you'd like, and I'll gladly update them.
To ensure that Ozcart's emails get to your inbox, I would like to ask you to log in to your client area, and if you find a message that states that you should confirm your email, please do so. This would also be a great time to change your email address, should you need to, or simply confirm the current one. It would be beneficial to keep your email up to date to avoid service disruption.

Another very important point is to please go to your account and in the "Hello" top right dropdown menu, select Manage credit card details, and verify your credit card there. If it has expired, please replace it with your new one to avoid service disruption. If you are using bank transfer, you will have to update it to credit card payment, even if there's still a year left until payment (better now than later!). If you are using a debit card, it may not work and I ask that you please use a credit card (you can use one where you get points or cash back, that helps :) ). If it's empty, you can add your current credit card information.
Rest assured that we deal with your information privately and seriously.

If you have feedback or concerns, please, by all means, let me know!

You can also share what you would like to see in Ozcart and I'll note it.

Thank you for reading my introduction and it will be a pleasure to speak to every one of you.
Blessings,
Ramsey
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