Herb -
From my dealings with shop owners, many made technology purchases based on the their incoming order ratios, cash flow, and base membership costs. These purchases or system upgrades may have been made just a year or two ago.
They're tied in with financing and tech support that marries them to a cheatin' spouse.
In those short years, WSs have changed many, many terms:
- Higher membership costs
- Higher sending technology costs
- Higher per order receiving/reporting fees
- More penalties (equal sending, rapid response)
And incomings are lower overall, in part due to some "partners" marketing drop-ship flowers over local florist delivered gifts.
If they quit, the buyouts to get out of the marriage can be relatively high, and then the shops will be without tech support. They may or may not have the cash to go out and purchase new systems - ones they now realize to be vital to their business' performances.
Divorce is a slow process (and perhaps costly in the near term) for a shop that has all their business eggs (CC clearings, website, POS) in one basket.
You
are right in that simply complaining and doing nothing is futile.
We all have friends who constantly complain about their husbands/wives and then do nothing. We used to feel sorry about their situations, but since they've done nothing to change the circumstances over long periods of time, we tend to tune them out. It's clear, they just want to complain and we're tired of being drained from it.
But sometimes people just want to vent a little, and that's OK by me. That's what friends are for.
