Flint River Ranch

Product Shortages and UPS Shipping Delays

As some of you may be aware, Flint River Ranch experienced a back-order situation on some products throughout our warehouse network, and we worked diligently to resolve the situation. We appreciate your patience with us as we rerouted orders and your understanding that this caused delayed delivery of certain products to various areas of the country.

Many of you have been a FRR distributor for years and have seen how the upcoming holiday season also affects shipping timeframes, and 2004 has not been any different. Let your customers know now that shipping this season will be difficult at times due to the increased volume of shipping commercial goods nationwide, as well as the increased demand on UPS to get personal packages out to family and friends.

Our general shipping timeframe is usually three business days from the time the product leaves its original warehouse to the time it’s delivered to the customer. During the holiday season, it should be expected that shipments will be delayed because of the additional volume of packages being shipped all over the United States, not just from Flint River Ranch. To alleviate any potential inconvenience a delay may cause, please have your customers allow seven to 10 business days for shipping during this time of year. They will be pleasantly surprised when it arrives early, but also forewarned of potential delays ahead of time.

We cannot guarantee shipping timeframes at any time, and we cannot anticipate what areas of the country will be hardest hit with these delays. We ask for your understanding and that you communicate to your customers that they should order sooner rather than last-minute, especially at this time of year.

Call Center Hours Extended

Flint River Ranch offers customers and distributors numerous ways to contact us and get your pet food orders placed—fax, e-mail, live phone and voice-mail. We have expanded our call center hours to help accommodate customers and distributors across the nation. FRR has service representatives available to answer calls Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM Eastern to 6:00 PM Pacific. During those hours, we strive to answer every live call whenever possible, but please understand that there will be times when it is not possible for customers and / or distributors to talk with a person on the phone.

Our (800) FLINT58 number has undergone some revisions, which should help quicken the process of converting these voice messages into processed orders for you. It is very important that whenever a you or one of your customers leaves a message for us to place an order that the order is very clear and payment instructions are concise. If there is any question about the order, you or your customer will be contacted for clarification prior to the order being completed. Understand that this may result in shipping delays for that order.

General House-Keeping

It has come to our attention directly from customers that their personal information is being shared with other companies looking for new business leads and prospective customers. On more than one occasion, customers have contacted FRR directly, requesting that we not sell their personal information (which we do not). They were requesting this of us because they had recently ordered FRR food via the Internet and only after that transaction occurred did they start receiving unwanted e-mail offers.

Customer credit card and address information is strictly confidential, and any Distributor identified to be using the Internet to gather information that is then passed on to other parties for marketing purposes will automatically be terminated. Additionally, any distributor found to be representing themselves or establishing a contract as Flint River Ranch will also be automatically terminated.

Some distributors are skirting a very fine line by utilizing the name “Flint River Ranch” in their email replies, correspondence, 800#’s, websites (not addresses, but within their sites as proclaiming to be “the HOME of Flint River Ranch) and other such practices. Marketing your distributorship as being the sole contact for FRR will be considered an infringement upon our agreement and business trademark. Termination will result to distributors who we find continuing to go beyond the intention of our agreement in marketing Flint River Ranch.

We are pleased to present our Extranet to all distributors who are not tax exempt so that you can process your own personal orders, drop-ship orders and customer orders for those in your immediate downline! We ask tax-exempt distributors to continue being patient with us as we finish development to support tax-exemption for orders. They can still access the Enet, but we ask you not to produce orders for now.

You will launch the Flint River Ranch Extranet by going to this Web site: https://extranet.securefreedom.com/FlintRiverRanch/StartFrame.asp. You will be asked for your User ID, which is your FRR number, and your password, which is the SSN or Federal EIN you signed up with at Flint River Ranch. If you have multiple FRR numbers, you will have multiple Extranet accounts to access.

When you enter into the Extranet, your menu options are listed along the left. Here’s a brief description of what you will find under each category:

Personal Profile – You can update your own billing and shipping information, as well as phone and e-mail contact info.

Personally Enrolled – This will list the distributors in your immediate downline, as well as their status – Qualified (QD), Active (AD) or Inactive (ID).

Autoship – You have access to adjust your existing personal automated shipments and create new ones for yourself.

Customers – This is a list of all the customers in your immediate downline, listed alphabetically by last name. There is also a search function to more easily find a customer by FRR number.

Genealogy—This allows you to pull reports about the distributors within your downline.

Orders—The history of your orders and those of customers within your direct downline is kept here. You can pull up each order to see what the status is, track the order, as well as print any FRR invoices for your customers.

Order Online—The Coup de Gras! Here’s where you will place orders for yourself and customer orders.

To place an order on the Extranet, there are some very easy steps to follow below:

1. Click on the Order Online link to begin, and you will be brought to a screen that asks if this order is for Yourself or for an Existing Customer. This option determines who will be billed for the order. If you are placing a drop-shipment for a customer, choose the Yourself option. If choosing the Existing Customer option, you will need to select the customer from your list. Use the Search option to search by FRR number for faster results. When you find the correct customer, click on the Order Now link.

2. Scroll through the products list and tell the system how many of what items you want. When you’re finished, click on the Check Out button at the bottom of the page.

3. If you’re placing an order for yourself or a drop-ship order, you will need to enter the shipping address information. If you are placing a customer order paid for by the customer (the Existing Customer option), his/her shipping and billing information will populate the fields. Before you can go to the payment option, you must check the box that states you agree the information is correct. Remember that any changes that you make will populate back into our database and it will show that this came from your Enet. Insure that all information that you add into this order is correct. If you are placing a 1x order, insure that the next time you place a order you update the shipping address again to reflect the permanent shipping address or information. FRR will not be responsible for miss-shipments due to erroneous information placed on the Enet and any additional shipping charges will be the responsibility of the distributor.

4. Confirm the contents of the order and address from the invoice form provided and click on the Next button.

5. Agree to the terms and conditions that may be presented by choosing the I Agree link.

6. Choose the payment method—Credit Card or ACH. If using a credit card, we require the entire credit card number, expiration date and security code assigned to that card. For ACH payment, we must have both the account number and the ABA routing number.

7. Enter the appropriate payment information into the fields provided and click on the I Agree button.

8. Your confirmation number will be displayed. You can also see your order by viewing the Orders option from the Extranet menu.

Further changes will be forthcoming on the Enet, but all will find this tool to be a great enhancement over calling in directly to the call centers to try to find UPS tracking numbers and shipment status. While most information should be considered “dated” by up to 24 hours, you will find that the majority of information will be very accurate. The Enet will have the same level of security as the current call center software that we use every day. Additionally, when the FRRCO website becomes active...I believe by the end of this month...there will be a link for all Distributors to use to go directly to the sign in page and not have to type in the link that we are providing today. Insure that you are as accurate as possible in how you process your orders. There will be some challenges as we have come to expect in all that FRR tries to do, but I do believe that we have anticipated the majority of issues that may come up and have prepared for them. Realize that not everyone will be able to login to the Enet at the very same time. Some delay will occur on heavier traffic periods, but as we get a better idea as to how many distributors are using the Enet and when, we should be able to adjust our pipeline to reflect that demand. Above all, don’t be impatient at first and please allow for any delays that may occur with processing an order or waiting on payment confirmation.

We thank you for your interest and support in Flint River Ranch. I look forward to providing more features and enhancements in the future.