UK Magic Shops Customer Satisfaction – Problems with the Magic Shop

Does the Merchant of Magic UK Shop have problems?

Our magic shop wouldn’t have been growing the way it has, without our almost obsessive interest in how we are serving our customers. After all, its whole purpose is to supply magic tricks and give support to the magic community. So every now and then we ask our customers how we have done and from that feedback we can learn how to make things better. Last week we asked magicians who had recently placed an order at The Merchant of Magic to give us feedback. 1000 responded which gave us a nice sample size. Here’s the results and some lessons we learn’t from it:

Magic Tricks and Customer Satisfaction

This is a hard one, as we have little control over which magic tricks magicians will order from the magic shop. One persons meat is anothers poison. Here’s a graph of the results:

It’s great to see that most magicians are happy with the magic tricks that they order. Although we are a ‘whole of market’ magic shop, so we stock everything without our own bias coming into play, we do try to highlight the best magic tricks on the site as much as possible.

What we could do better: The shop already has a team of magicians on hand to give opinions either by email or by phone. As we don’t mainly manufacture, it doesn’t matter to the team which magic tricks they recommend as far as profit is concerned. For them, it’s more important that the magic tricks fit the person planning on using them, so they will always tell you if they think a trick or product sucks or if it’s a favourite. It would be great to expand the customer reviews section on the site, perhaps add in staff recommended suggestions, and system that shows general feedback about items taken from social media sources.

The most important factor is aftercare here. We offer a returns program and with many items a 1 full year magic trick exchange period. Building in ways to recontact customers after a sale, so we can follow up if they have any problems is on the to do list for our developers.

The shopping experience

Firstly we asked magicians to give us feedback about the website:

Overall the results are good, but they do highlight some issues.

Website Layout

The layout is pretty basic and we don’t change it much. It’s always been about content over style. Most customers arrive on the magic shop site on specific product pages rather than the front page, so it’s vital that the product pages are clear and give as much information as possible. It would be nice to change the design for the front page, but it currently seems to help people find something interesting as quickly as possible and that’s the goal.

Magic Shop Search

Search really needs some work. It’s quite hard to find a specific colour sponge ball for example. We are looking for a new search function for the site and that’s going to be fixed as a top priority.

Magic Trick Demo Videos

The demo’s are an issue for us. We used to host a lot on Youtube, but many magic demos have music that needs a licence to be used and often the magic creators don’t get this permission. Youtube contacted us to say they were unhappy with the licencing for the music on a lot of the videos, so we switched to have the demos downloadable instead. That seems to work OK, but it’s not ideal for customers using mobile to browse the site. It’s a work in progress.

Pricing

Pricing of our magic tricks seems OK. We don’t want to be the cheapest bargin basement shop, as we want to have sufficient margin to allow the best customer service we can, and have room to advertise and grow the magic shop. We don’t want to be the most expensive magic shop either. It’s about finding a balance that allows us to employ magicians full time to answer the phones and emails, and at the same time give good value.

UK V.A.T

We received some feedback about how we show VAT on the site. It’s a difficult issue as we sell to trade, and have a huge international customer base. At the moment we have a button on every page to allow visitors to choose it they want UK specific tax to be shown. We need to work on making this more customer specific, so once you log in, we know where you are based and can show prices to reflect that. It’s an issue of your privacy that we strongly respect. At the moment we are working with our designers to see if we can default to your countires tax automatically, so expect some changes soon that will make this much simpler.

Customer Contact

Customer contact seems on track. We don’t want to spam our customers, but we do want to provide aftercare. Our phone lines get clogged up, but as we don’t want to just hurry people into placing orders, we sometimes need to chat with them for a long time giving advice. It’s not unusual for one of the team to be helping a magician through using a trick they have purchased and that has taken over an hour sometimes. Email is always a second option, but it would be great to be able to employ another magician for the phone lines. Once again it’s a balancing act as we can only build in so much budget for this and still compete with guys selling magic at almost cost price from their bedrooms. It seems that most magicians are understanding about this if the phone lines have a long wait, and they are happy that we have not outsourced calls to international call centres. We need to find a way to get more people in contact faster.

Delivery of magic shop orders.

Next we asked magicians to give us feedback about the delivery process of the orders they place at the magic shop.

The main issues here are speed of delivery and our delivery methods. Speed of delivery needs to be better. As we have grown we ran out of space at the shop, so we warehouse a LOT of the range if they tend to be slower sellers. It was a hard choice for us, but we wanted to sell everything we can, just like an Amazon for magic. That means we need distribution centres in the UK, Europe, and the US. We keep most of the popular items in stock in the UK magic shop, but other items have a 1-2 day wait for the item to be picked at the warehouse and sent to the shop for packing. One option we are looking into is moving packing to within each warehouse, so that it removes the transfer time. That would mean having extra staff at each warehouse, so it’s a balancing act between product price and logistical costs. The plan is to brainstrom ways we can streamline this to get items picked quicker.

Shipping methods are limited in the UK at the moment. We use Royal Mail. As we offer free shipping for orders over £50 it’s difficult to switch to UPS or DHL and offer the same low rates or free shipping options. Looking at the data, most of the issues are on our international shipping speeds, so we will work on finding ways to improve international shipping whilst still keeping the price a low fixed rate.

Magic Shop Customer Care

Getting an order out to customers is one thing, but customer care is everything. Here’s what our customers thought:

Happy with that. We do have a problem with not enough staff to cope with the customer contact, so phone wait times can be long. We don’t want to pass on calls to a call centre to take orders, as it’s important that the person on the phone to you is a working magician.

Recommended UK Magic Shop

Finally we asked the most important question. Would our customers recommend us to their friends and family. Here’s what they said:

Yay! That was an excellent result to see and the whole team were over the moon. However, it doesn’t mean we can rest. The magic shop feedback from magicians gave us a LOT to work on, so we will take all the suggestions and see how we can keep going on our mission to provide the best magic shop we can.

Thanks to all of you for taking part and leaving us with such great suggestions and feedback!

Have we missed something? Let us know how we can improve things at MoM in the comments section below:

Why US Magic Shops Look Cheaper Than UK Magic Shops

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

By Dominic Reyes

David writes:

I've noticed that magic shops in the US seem to be cheaper than magic shops in the UK, Why is that? Shouldn't it just be a simple currency exchange to set the prices? Are UK magic shops ripping us off?

Hi David, That's a great question and catches many magicians by surprise when they order magic tricks form magic shops in the US. Are US Magic shops cheaper than UK magic shops? It depends.. Lets take a look at the real cost of importing magic tricks into the UK:

The main difference in price is caused by tax. Good, established magic shops are required by law to charge VAT. The US magic shops don't show VAT with their prices because they don't collect it. V.A.T gets added tot he price of the order when the items arrive into the UK. You get a letter from UPS or FedEx charging you VAT, Import Duty, and a ridiculously high processing fee on top. You have to pay the fees if you want them to deliver your package a few days later.

If you buy magic tricks from a US magic shop, you will be paying in US Dollars on a debit or credit card. Your bank will charge a fee for processing the exchange of currency, sometimes as much as 3% as a bank charge. UK shops have already taken care of all the importing and currency exchange for you.

Another issue is aftercare, there's a lot of value in having customer care, local telephone support, returns/exchanges, and shipping from within your own country. You probably don't need that for just a deck of cards, but for higher ticket price items or electrical items, it's worth using (and supporting) your own countries magic community, economy, and magic shop businesses.

Importing magic tricks into the UK can sometimes be a good deal. If it's a rare item, on special offer in a US magic shop, or if it's not an item that quality or aftercare would be an issue of importance. However, the way of displaying prices in the US is different to the UK and it's important to understand that additional charges and delays can be added to he order which could wipe out the cost saving.

How to Import Magic Tricks from the US or China – Cost/Tax – Problems

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

Rebecca wants to know about the costs of importing magic tricks into the UK.

Rebecca asks:

'I've been looking at magic shops online and notice that many US magic shops seem a lot cheaper than UK shops. I like to buy my magic from The Merchant of Magic as the service is great, but some tricks are only available in other countries. As you order magic tricks internationally, could you give me some advice, please?'

Buying magic tricks from magic shops outside the UK can look like an amazing deal. Sometimes the items appear to be a lot cheaper, or simply are not available in UK magic shops. Let's look at the process and give you some tips for ordering magic from magic shops outside of the UK.

The ordering process.

Most websites are pretty much the same, although there are design differences which can make the shopping experience different. However, essentially, you browse the site, add items into your shopping cart and fill in a shipping section and payment section.

The main differences will be that the prices are not shown in UK Currency, and measurements may be different.

Payment.

If you purchase an item using your card outside the UK, you will be performing a transaction in the currency of the country the shop is based within. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard make this very easy, but it's important to understand that you are also performing a currency conversion when you make the transaction.

Your bank/card company will convert the payment into UK currency and change you a fee. Each bank charges a different fee for international transactions, this can be around 2-3% of the transaction, so it's wise to check with your bank to see exactly how much the international payment will cost you.

VAT.

International magic shops don't show sales tax for the UK as this is payable later. Unlike shops in the UK, you won't be shown the full cost of the order including tax. This is because the UK tax is added to the value of the order once it arrives in the UK and Customs and Excise value the order and add the UK VAT element. When looking at prices of magic tricks in magic shops outside of the UK, you need to add an additional 20% to the price as this is the current VAT charge in the UK (correct as of 2013).

Import Duty.

The UK government doesn't like its citizens sending their money to another country. That's a fair point as it weakens the UK economy and builds up the coffers of the other country. To help balance this, the government charges an import duty fee. This is added to the total of the order after the VAT is added so you pay import duty on the value of the goods, the shipping cost and the VAT. Import duty in 2013 for magic tricks is currently 2.7%.

The import duty tax rate for importing Magic tricks into United Kingdom is 2.7%, the import VAT is 20%, when classified under Toys & Games → Other Toys & Games → Playing Cards with HS commodity code 9504.40.0000

Customs Clearance fees.

When your order arrives to the UK, it passes through customs and the VAT and Import Duty tax are added. The courier that will deliver the package pays this tax in advance for you, then will either write to you or phone you, to ask you to pay the tax fees, before they can deliver the package to you. They will also charge you a fee for the customs clearance process. This ranges from £10 – £25 per shipment.

Shipping Fees.

International shipping is much more expensive than domestic shipping, so check that the shipping fees shown on the magic website are fixed and cover delivery to your country. If the dealer offers free international shipping, double check that you will be getting all the goods as some dealers will remove the packaging, DVD boxes and additional bonus items to reduce the shipping weight. Make sure you will be getting exactly the same item or items as a customer from the websites own country, and if not, that you are made fully aware of this.

Some dealers will contact you after you place the order and ask for additional shipping due to the final weight of the order, or they may tell you that the order will have to ship by a different method that can take a few days or even a few weeks longer to arrive. Make sure you check this in advance, so there are surprises

Shipping delays.

Importing internationally will result in a much longer delivery time. The items have to travel a huge distance, then pass through the customs process. Once this is done, your import fees and taxes need to be paid, so there is a delay whist you are contacted to arrange this payment. It's important to remember this when you look at projected delivery times given by international magic shops. They have no control over the time it takes to clear customs, or routing delays, so allow extra time for this process to take place.

Damage in Transit.

Your goods will be traveling a long distance, often by plane or ship. It's vital that you make sure that additional care is taken to package the goods for a rough journey. Damage in transit will be hard to address if something goes wrong. It will cost you a great deal to return items internationally if that is possible at all. Your UK consumer rights probably won't cover you for transactions outside of the UK, so you will be relying on the trust and goodwill of the magic shop you are ordering from.

Returns.

Sometimes things go wrong, DVD's arrive broken or don't play, tricks are misdescribed or not useable in the UK. You will not have the same consumer rights that you do when buying magic tricks from a UK shop. Returning goods can be expensive and often will be at your cost. Good magic shops will try to look after you, but there are no guarantees. Make sure the shop you use is an established reputable magic dealer with good customer service reviews, and check on their returns policy before you purchase. If you use a credit card, rather than a debit card you may have some limited protection, but it's worth checking with your bank first.

Card Security.

Be sure to only use established magic shops you trust. Anyone can set up a website in a few hours, and by placing an order you are giving them full access to your card details. Ensure that the site has a secure checkout, ideally run by a third party, trusted payment gateway.

Summary of costs.

Prices and import laws change all the time, but currently you should expect to pay the following costs in addition to the prices shown on international magic shop websites:

Currency Conversion Fee	2.5%
VAT	20%
Import Duty	2.7%
Customs Clearance Fee	£15

So for example, imagine you placed an order for $100 worth of magic tricks

US$100 = £65 (as of 15/8/13 google currency conversion)

Currency Conversion Fee 2.5%	£1.62
VAT 20%	£13
Import Duty 2.7% of goods and VAT	£2.10
Clearance fees	£15

Total additional import costs £31.72

Sneaking through the system.

Sometimes packages that have a small order value will get through the system without charges. However, it's your legal duty to report any import to customs and pay the duty. Failing to declare imports, and paying incorrect import duty and VAT on imports could be regarded as smuggling, and tax avoidance.

It can still be a good idea.

Ordering magic tricks from magic shops outside of the UK can still be a great idea. If a magic trick is not available in the UK, and you fully understand the extra costs and delays, you can find some amazing items and rare tricks being sold all over the world. You don't need to be scared of ordering magic tricks internationally, just make sure you find out the full costs, so you can be delighted when the package arrives rather than shocked by the hidden costs.