Op Shop Directory Rant

I was almost going to write this on the actual Op Shop Directory blog page, but thought against it.  The website has the most traffic out of all the sites I have or help run.

It comes up well in google searches and the rebuild of the site helped out and the numbers seem to continue to grow.

The amount of dumb emails also continues to grow.

Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with people, it sometimes feels like I am doing something wrong, but I’m not sure what else I can do.

If someone has submitted an Op Shop with contact details, it goes up on the site with the contact details. If there are no contact details then there isn’t anything on the individual listing.

The contact page

My site has a contact page, actually, it has 2. One is for contacting me about a change to a listing or something to do with the website, the other one is used to submit an Op Shop.

Both of these things to me at least seem to make sense.

This is where the trouble starts.

People will contact me as if they are contacting the Op Shop they are wanting to talk to.

It ranges from asking about employment, asking if random bits and pieces are still in the shop (including if the mistakenly dropped off VHS tape of the Muppets is still there or has been sold)

It’s a whole mixed bag of different stuff, with almost all of them not stating what Op Shop they are trying to get hold of, so I have no idea who to even pass the message onto if I was going to pass the message on (I’m not, and I don’t)

To help with this a bit I have a couple of saved responses I can easily send back to them, just saying thanks for getting in touch and they will need to contact the Op Shop directly as their message as come to me.

I got this as a reply from one such message:

Thanks for making a simple message all very confusing. I think I will just give it a miss, best wishes.

This message made me want to write this post.

So I’m not sure what part is confusing to them really, but I will look at the saved response and maybe even make it simpler, and more to the point.

And the crazy thing is, on the contact page it clearly states in bold, with red writing to catch the eye that the form is for contacting me, the guy that runs the website and will not go to whatever Op Shop they are trying to contact.

Would I want to be the absolute central hub of everything to do with Op Shops in NZ including forwarding messages onto all the shops if someone was after them. NO.

The site already takes up a lot of my time, and I’ve tried automating as much as I can. It also costs me money. If I was getting paid that might be a different story, but the thing is, some of these Op Shops don’t have an email or even a phone.

I guess you can only do what you can do.