Spc Cornelson, in a recent post to the Web site, commented about how much he, and his fellow Troopers want to contribute and participate in the combined Welcome Home / Memorial Ceremony to be held back at home station. Of course, a large part of that eprit de corps may come from being in the “appropriate” uniform items, to include the Stetson and Spurs, offered as one special package in the Cavalry Kit. This kit, initially offered via a mail-in Excel based or PDF based order form was quickly seen as insufficient to meet the needs of the Troopers in country. Spc Cornelson, know that your senior leadership as well as the leadership of the 2d Cavalry Association have worked hard to urge the web staff to get the ability to order these products online. Also know that the web staff, which is the Soldier formerly known as Spc Golding, David Gettman, and myself, have been hard at it to make this thing work. We have had some errors on the store site and some problems integrating Pay Pal to the orders process, but mostly that all worked OK, and we continue to tweak the site to make it more functional.
If you have had a chance to tour the store, you will see many other items for sale, and many of those items get shipped to US customers. For most of those products, shipping and handling was not included in the price, as it is for the Cav Kit. The store site offered on-line integration with the United States Postal Service, our shipper of choice because it allows us to send items to the APO address. Prior to the “integration” of shipping service, we had received many orders from APO addresses, so it came as a surprise to me that orders were not getting through because of a shipping problem tied to the APO’s. Luckily the Regimental leadership, as well as senior leadership at the Squadron, Troop, Company and Battery level let me know loud and clear that there was a problem.
We knew it had something to do with the changes we had made in order to better integrate USPS to our site, but it took several calls to tech support, advice from other user groups, and the skillful application of several patches to get all of the software programs talking to each other. We all owe a special thanks to the Soldier formerly known as Spc Golding, as he did this work after spending 12 hours a day on shift at a TAF in JRTC. Thanks Isaac.
We (I should say my wife) have tested the site repeatedly over the last two days to include processing test orders to the APO’s. When I say test, I mean we went all the way through the system, to include paying for it via Pay Pal. I told my wife that I hope she enjoys her new Stetsons. (Oops…wrong thing to say. Now I get to figure out how to reverse a payment - LoL)
I am fairly confident the problems are fixed, although there are some more idiosynchracies to the program. When you order, and you are in PayPal, there will be a comment box. Put in your size and cord selection and it will come with the order. If you miss that box, e-mail your size and cord information to sales@secondcavalry.com or to billandmel@roadrunner.com or any other concerns you might have. For those who can’t get into PayPal, e-mail us as we are trying to us Paypal to e-mail an invoice and then you can just fill out the information and e-mail it back to Pay Pal, then they will get the information to our account. This is new and I should know in a day or two if it really works. There is also the old-fashined way, snail mail the order form with a check or money order to the address on the order form.
We have also received a few calls from in country to our customer service line at 1-877-763-2635.
I hope this woks, and I apologize for having such a rough start. Thanks for sticking with us. Always Ready! Toujours Pret!
Bill Heidner, (SFC, Ret)
