Pro’s & Con’s of SMC

History Of SMC
SMC (Specialty Merchandising Corporation) has establish itself as a turn-key company for over sixty years. They have representatives all over the United States. SMC offers people the opportunity to own thier own business by selling items from SMC warehouse. These items are kitchen appliances, home decor, bed & bath and more. The main catalog is quite large with items to sell from your home.

The Costs
SMC offers two packages to order. The SMC Gold plan is $315 dollars to start. The SMC Silver plan is only $40 to start but the eleven monthly payments end up cost a total of $440.00. As with any other personal business the extra catalogs, shipping costs, inventory costs, travel expenses are your responsibility.

The Customer Service Department
The employees of SMC are actually very helpful when it comes to ordering your inventory, answering questions and training new clients. 85% of the time, a person is able to get throug the telephone lines. You are able to contact customer service online and their response time is usually 24 hours. As a client, you are able to access and order inventory with your account online.

Unfortunately, SMC is not the “Golden Egg” of home businesses. There have been many people with complaints about SMC, myself included. I have contacted the BBB in regards to SMC report and have found out that there have been more than 100 verifiable complaints against them. While being a very short client of SMC, I found that these things needed to be changed within the company.

Cost
Along with the $300-400 dollar account fee, there are many high costs to selling SMC merchandise. A person is giving one main catalog and several smaller ones. There is a cost to obtain more catalogs and compared to other home business catalogs these are high priced for the amount that you get in bulk. There is the cost of shipping, not only does SMC charge you for shipping costs but there is an extra charge to ship items to different locations.

Managerial Response
After turning my payment into SMC and obtaining a confirmation, I relized that I had paid for the Golden Account. I actually wanted the Silver account. I had telephoned Customer Service a few minutes after the confirmation to make changes. I was told that a supervisor would contact me and to leave a messege on the managers voice mail. I spent a week leaving messeges on the managers voice mail with no response.

Refund or Merchandise Returns
I personally know nothing about merchandise returns other than from what I have heard from word of mouth. Apparently, a co-workers mother ordered $1000.00 worth of merchandise over time. When she returned the items, not only did it take a long time for confirmation but she had to threaten SMC to obtain her refund.

I personally had to report SMC to my bank and the BBB to obtain a refund for the starter package. SMC’s return policy is not an easy one either. SMC advertises as if returning items are a breeze but in reality returning items is a bunch of paperwork and tracking down your refund.

If I had the money or patience, I would have stayed with SMC simply because I liked the quality of their catalogs. I personally just did not like how things were handled from the start. If someone had the time, money, patience and location for a business they could make a lot of money with SMC products, just expect problems along the way.