Yesterday I had 3 orders.
2 for 2 pieces - paid immediately and I immediately refunded the excess postage.
1 for 4 pieces - not paid and no response to the email I sent asking if it was the excessive postal charge which had shocked. Sent a second email today noting that the ordered items are reserved against the order and suggesting I could send a corrected Paypal invoice.
At last 24 hours (payment link expired of course) a response that yes it was the postage and then horror of horrors the pieces were now no longer available.
Just sent another note explaining and offering to Paypal invoice or cancel order and fix the postage so it all works out to the corrected amount if order raised again.
I just wish I knew a better way to do this.
I donāt make profit on my postage - I charge simple single things (my smaller boxes) at cost first class small package and an extra 20p (!) for my bigger boxes as their packaging is more expensive.
50% of the customers I refund thank me, some of them in the Feedback.
Iāve tried adding a note to the listings to say I refund the excess and that note was on at least one of the pieces in the order but who reads the small print.
Customer wanted to know why I couldnāt send a discount code or correct the amount before payment was calculated. I said sorry no can do.
95% of my customers appear happy with the refund system.
I could add Ā£1 for additional items to each listing. In this case the customer would end up paying Ā£6,50, it would cost me Ā£4.40 as needs because of value to go signed for and I would charge, after the refund, Ā£5.00. So she would end up paying Ā£1.50 extra.
If instead of refunding I had added the Ā£1 to the listings I refunded yesterday both customers would have paid an extra Ā£1 and I wouldnāt have got all of that, Paypal would have taken their cutā¦
I have no solution.
Waiting to see if customer comes back to me.
Replying to myself ā 'cos this one is bugging me.
What do you think to the idea of sending a Paypal invoice with the adjusted postage as soon as I get a multiple order / no payment within an hour ?
Including an explanatory note of course.
The only one that I can think of is not to charge for UK delivery and increase your prices by Ā£2 across the board to average the postage cost out over all your items. This would make some customers winners and some losers in terms of postage but they wouldnāt get the āshockā at the end.
It is not as scrupulously fair as I would like to be, but customers actually seem to like this better than having known postage charges. Probably just due to lack of confidence in their own mental arithmetic when adding the cost of postage to their items.
Sorry that wonāt work for me. It is impossible to post my glass anything smaller than small package and that means a minimum of Ā£3.30.
If I add the postal charge to the price for the glass I will then have to pay Folksy 6% of the postal charge as the postal charge is not included in their fee calculation.
The good news is that customer has now responded. Iāve cancelled the order, fixed all 4 pieces to have an additional item charge of 50p which means the total postage will end up at the Ā£5 I want it to be.
Iāve even tested it by raising the order myself against a rubbish email address and postal address then cancelling after it told me the postage but before I confirmed it. A useful thing to be able to do.
PS: Re-Order completed after specifically adjusted postal prices on the listings.
Customer very happy, Seller very happy. Parcel on its way out tomorrow.
Glass maker making hearts tomorrow - 4 !
Could you not put a nominal amount, say 50p or Ā£1 into the additional postage field and still refund where you feel you should? That way the buyer wouldnāt get the shock of the huge postage charge and would be even more pleased if they received a refund.
Obviously you would have to calculate the additional amount so you werenāt out of pocketā¦ the way I do it is, if I donāt tip into the next postage band until the customer orders 4 things, the additional charge is one-third of the difference between the postage bands, a slightly heavier item might have half the difference as the additional charge, and so on.
Very occasionally a customer orders an odd combination which leaves me a little short on the shipping charge but itās not usually all that much and generally Iām just happy that they are ordering several items at once
Helen Thanks. I might do a few calculations against other combined orders to see if adding 50p as I did here would work. I lost an order a couple of weeks ago from someone who didnāt actually take the order to the point of non-payment but obviously to where it calculates to total. I wrote back explaining but didnāt hear again but that is why Iām adding the note to my listings now.
Joy, I just had a look at a random one of your listings, (the Rainbow Cloud, because itās fab ) and I couldnt see anything about combined postage. I did skim read, in fairness, but thatās how a lot of customers seem to shop as well. Iāve got a specific paragraph in my listings under a capital letters heading of COMBINED POSTAGE and I copy and paste that onto all my listings, so hopefully itās a bit more ācatch your eyeā and āgo toā if you were looking for that info quickly, because with the cost of my postage it would be a shock if you didnāt know what was going to be refunded on a multiple order. Might work as an idea for you too?
Even if you added Ā£1 as the additional postage and refunded the over (if you feel you should, Iām not convinced) it would look betterā¦ I could cope with a shipping charge of Ā£6 or so for 4 items but Iād abandon too if it came out at over Ā£13.
This is how I work my postage out as wellā¦sometimes I might be 30p or so short, and sometimes a bit overā¦I refund if I have overcharged by more than Ā£1ā¦
JoSara
Youāre quite right there is nothing against the Rainbow Cloud but there is in my more recent listings. Iāve done just as you said and copy / pasted it.
I put it at the end of the Inspiration section so it stands out a bit more.
Itās the only way I can think of doing the combined postage info without getting involved in trying to work out how much to put into the extra postage bit when I combine some orders, but not others. Itās far too complicated for me to do, so I just try and make it as obvious as possible in the listing, so the customer can see how to proceed and what will happen with a postage refund, even to a word skimming customer
I think your postage situation and mine are a bit different from some other sellers. Where we are posting fragile, possibly oddly shaped, heavier things which need a lot of packaging which inevitably bulks up the size and maybe the postal band.
I have to keep a stack of boxes in to allow for odd combinations (my garden centre and Post Office keep me well supplied !).
I will for the moment I think just keep adding that text to my listings as I renew them and the others as I find time.
I do think that next time I get a multiple sale like this that I will try the postal adjusted Paypal invoice asap after realising they havenāt paid. Every little helps.
joy-
could you put something about refunding postage at the very beginning of your description in brackets but use a few keywords in it so doesnāt mess up SEO etc.
Description
[If you are buying this suncatcher with other suncatchers or stained glass pictures, I will refund any excess postage costs]
This is a stained glass suncatcher made using the Tiffany copper foil technique. It is entirely hand crafted, unique and very special.
It will be the firs thing they read and may en courage people to buy more when they reasle they won;t be paying alot of p&P.
