fiatplus*aol.com wrote:
quote=Dan Sarandrea (Phila);185598] One thing that I think could be made a bit more clear is the difference between PayPal and Credit Card with respect to shipping charges. I gather that if I place an order on the site and pay the parts-only figure with a CC, that first payment stands as authorization for you to make a second charge on the CC for the shipping costs once they have been determined without any further action or approval by the customer. Based on my most recent order paid thru PayPal, I also gather that if using PP to make the parts purchase, the customer has to assent to a separate and distinct PP request for funds sent from your staff to the customer to pay the shipping charges once they have been determined. Is that pretty much an accurate description?[/quote]
Dan,
All web store orders paid for with pay pal get an immediate confirmation email of their order that states right on the front page:
Order status: Not Finished
Paypal customers: We will contact you with a shipping amount.
And then after the list of items ordered, it says:
Paypal customers: The cost to ship your product has not yet been added to your order, information on shipping costs will follow.
As best as we have been able to determine, these two sentences on every web store order confirmation (paid by pay pal) usually works. Of course, we always get the odd client that thinks all orders should be shipped free of charge. But I get those clients most often on the phone.
Clients that use pay pal for payment and provide us with a bad email address obviously delays the order (And I know from the bounce that they did not get the order confirmation). We try to contact the client by phone, but if that doesn't work we send them a letter in the mail...
So, if you pay with pay pal, we contact you for the additional fees to ship the order. This usually adds a minimum of one working day between when we download the order, and when it gets shipped. And it adds a huge amount of in house processing time to every pay pal order. Our clients often have their own personal reasons for using pay pal, and we try to accommodate them as needed.
If you use a credit card, and are NOT an international delivery address, we charge your card the total amount at the time of processing the order (not before), and usually ship the same day. Since we only charge exactly what UPS charges us for shipping (AND in more than 99% of our orders the client specifies UPS as the delivery method), we feel we are authorized to add the shipping amount to the total.
That's it!
Of course there are a million exceptions, and it seems clients can come up with new situations every day...
Chris Obert