We currently have hundreds of vendors on our CS-Cart Multi Vendor and are finding some of them aren't setting up shipping methods correctly. The result is buyers are trying to buy the vendor products and hitting a brick wall at checkout because the vendor didn't set things up right.
This obviously makes our marketplace look bad to customers. We have gotten numerous emails from buyers complaining they can't complete a purchase and it's because shipping wasn't set up right by the vendor.
Does anyone know of a way to not allow vendor products to appear publicly in the marketplace if there isn't a shipping method working properly for it? Is there an addon for this? Has anyone custom developed it?
If the products simply didn't get shown in the marketplace it would be an easy way to make sure the marketplace is clean with products that can actually be purchased. This seems like something that should be a standard feature of Multi-Vendor, but doesn't seem to be.
I have mentioned a few times in forum and cs cart team that multivendor is build in the way if you have a few friends who selling through your website. If you have lots of vendors coming to sell it is impossible control. I have mentioned to implement some steps in the vendor registration. For example they need to create a delivery charge, next to connect payment account and etc.
For now I have sorted with SoftSolid addon at least not to show vendor shop if product(s) is hidden or disapproved, or simple vendor not creating any product for the while.
Another thing I have sorted with addon auto approve vendors. For me doesn't make sense why I have to click to approve vendor after registration? Can I decide to approve or not by person registration name or email? For me is important to see what his selling and approve or not.
Thanks for the reply. We are scaling quickly. In the past two months we have had 600 vendors apply to sell on our marketplace and expect to have over 1,000 very soon. That said, we are taking it slow and approving them in waves since the vendors need hand holding through setting up a store. Even with trying to create proper help materials for them they have difficulty. Here's our help center: http://goimagine.helpsite.com
Our biggest issue is the fact Vendors can easily post products to the marketplace even if there is no working shipping methods to actually buy the products. I think most vendors get excited when opening a new store and the first thing they do is post products before making sure that shipping methods and payment are set up properly. This is resulting in unhappy buyers that are trying to buy things in our marketplace but can't.
There definitely seems like a lack of Quality Control in Multi-Vendor to ensure vendors are setting up their stores properly.
You can check out our marketplace here if interested www.goimagine.com