i think that you should just get the e-mail when it’s been paid for. it’s really confusing for an e-mail to say ‘somebody has ordered you work’ when they haven’t and it is very difficult to contact a person and basically say (to a person who longer wants to buy) " why didn’t you buy from me in the end?"
i am not sure that online shops should be set up for every eventuality - by their very nature that’s how they work - getting payments online. Also folksy is a business & cannot be expected to cover every eventuality.
however i can also see the other side and agree with those that have said about problems with payments - how will we know if somebody has had a problem with paying? i agree with the idea about adding something at the checkout stage (before payment) about saying to customers what to do if they have problems with order etc.
perhaps you could say - “if you do not receive confirmation that you payment has gone through successfully please contact the seller”
I sold on eBay for a long time before opening my Bobby’s Boutique shop, and accepted various kinds of payments. Paypal was always preferable, but it was nice to have the other options too. On eBay which I believe to be one of the largest on-line selling platforms, you get notified once an item has been sold, and then have the option to send an invoice to the buyer if they haven’t paid within your expected time frame (I think this would be a great idea on here).
It seems very odd to me that Folksy want to change a system that works. On every selling platform, non-paying buyers are an occasional inconvenience, I cannot see how Folksy will increase sales for anyone by limiting their buyers to those who can/will use PayPal. Folksy has a limited enough reach as it is, I would really appreciate if they didn’t limit my customers just to save me getting an occasion stray order. I seem to be in the minority here, but feel quite cross that some of my valued customers will no longer be able to buy from my shop, simply because they don’t have the internet or because they don’t use PayPal. rant over xxxx
I always mark the item as paid - I’ve checked with admin about this years ago, and they said it’s fine. Up until we were able to mark it as paid ourselves I always had to contact admin to mark it as paid for me, and I do resent you implying that I am cheating Folksy out of commission when I actually encourage people to buy via my shop and not privately!
Theoretically Folksy could add an ‘other’ payment option for customers who do not want to make payment via PayPal. Then if other was selected the order would work the same way as it currently does. This would need to be an opt in for sellers though as not everyone will want to offer this alternative.
On Folksy I take payment via PayPal only (I’ve never had a request for an alternative payment option). So in this respect I do not consider that the Folksy system works properly as I do not want my items to be treated as sold and removed from sale until the PayPal payment has been successfully completed. The non-payment scenario may not happen often but it I’d really prefer it if it didn’t happen at all.
I’m totally with you! I do my best to get customers to buy through Folksy, and they look at other shops when they’re here too. But not everyone trusts Paypal, and some prefer a good old fashioned cheque or postal order etc. The percentage of non-payers for a busy shop is minimal in reality. It probably gets noticed more by people with a lesser amount of sales, but when you get to a certain point you just shrug is off as ‘their loss’ if once you have emailed a non-payer they don’t reply or just say they changed their mind.
I’ve always plugged Folksy rather that the opposition, but at this rate I will be thinking twice and sending people where they have more payment options.
Thanks for the back up - I was feeling like a lone voice
The lady that buys from me all the time is a pensioner, and her and her group of ‘oldies’ as she calls them get together and buy from me using her account (that she is very proud to have set up on her kindle with no outside help!). So I have my four or five oldies that like to use their coffee morning to browse and buy from my shop, and I would hate to lose them. Having another payment option button, for her to click at checkout would be the perfect solution, and as @Beledien mentioned, those who would need it could opt in. I’m not sure how tricky this would be to set up, but it would be a perfect solution for everyone I reckon
I too shrug off the odd unpaid order, it’s not too regular, and more often than not, is resolved with a quick email anyway. I don’t have an opposition for folksy…yet I plan to remain here, I love it here, and selling exclusively on here has served me well, I just hope it continues to do so xxxx
Not too sure how this would work. Many people, myself included, make one off items. If a customer was to purchase an item but payment did not go through are you suggesting that the item will remain for sale in our shops? If so I can see this becoming a problem if the reason for non payment is genuine as the item would not be removed from sale and therefore could potentially be bought by another party before payment by the first is sorted. This is fine if you can produce more than one of an item but not for one offs.
It’s unfortunate if a buyer misses out, but from a sellers perspective they’re still going to sell the item either way so it’s less of an issue than the alternative scenario: an item being marked as sold even though it’s not and therefore being unavailable to purchase by a second interested customer for 24 hours or more. People will see an item as unavailable and move on, sale lost.
Most payment glitches are very temporary in nature so hopefully, in the case of a glitch in the process, a buyer could go back to their basket and go through the process again straight away … something which cannot happen under the current system.
It sounds like there needs to be the option for sellers to accept cheques if they want to , then the customer could confirm a purchase by choosing that alternative payment option .
The new proposal would solve the non payer problem for those that only accept paypal , and those that choose to accept other options would probably be happy to deal with the odd non payer by contacting them as now.
Additionally perhaps there could be a warning message at check out like lots of shops on ebay have ,that says "the item can be bought by someone else untill payment has been completed "
I have been reading through the responses to this post and there seems to be one thing that people are not discussing - sellers’ and buyers’ protection available with Paypal.
To me, that is a big deal as I believe it should be for any merchant. I truly believe that if a buyer wishes to pay for an item by cheque they can pay through Paypal’s e-cheque feature. We are protected for shipping issues and general malfeance and our buyers are aware of Paypal’s advantages for them.
For many years I was a high volume EBay book seller and used a just in time drop shipper for effiency and so I did not have to invest in inventory. My biggest customers were Univeristy students who often had to purchase in excess of £2000 of texts per year (depending on their course). I cannot tell you how many times Paypal saved me from losing money due to their seller protection AND the customer was free to use their e-cheque facility as many did not have credit cards. As long as I instructed my supplier to ship to the PP address I was covered for almost anything and my customers had confidence that they would actually receive the items for which they had paid.
I am a (very) low volume seller now and selling my own one off pieces of artwork. As long as I sell online I will never accept a payment from anyone without it going through Paypal for many of the same reasons until such time that Folksy offers their own version of direct checkout with the same level as Paypal’s S & B protection.
Before accepting payments outside of PP I suggest you do so only if you can afford to refund or replace without the benefit of Seller’s Protection. I have never had an issue where PP did not have my back.
I keep a proof of post for all items posted - if they get lost / arrive damaged I can claim through Royal Mail. It’s how we all managed before Paypal ( a fairly recent innovation in the grand scheme of things) was invented. Nobody should be reliant on one system alone.
Not everyone does online banking (I certainly don’t as I kept forgetting my passwords!) so e-cheques aren’t for everyone, and you have to wait as long for them to clear as a real cheque.
I think it is only fair to offer customers a choice of how to pay, it shouldn’t be limited to just Paypal.
With items at a low cost in my shop, the seller protection is not so important for me and in the two years of trading at reasonably high volume, I have never had any issues so far. And I agree, I only accept other methods because at such low value, I can afford to take the hit. I still think that the choice should be mine to make. And my ‘oldies’ don’t do online banking, and I’d hate to ailienate them xxxx
Just going back to the original topic, I’ve just had a sale, maybe because I’m trying hard with listing and promoting. The buyer has not paid. I can see she went to all the trouble of filling in her address, as always happens, then abandoned the sale. I’ve sent a kind email and will wait to see if she gets back to me. Meanwhile, the item is not available for others to buy, even though I can reproduce it.
This particular item has been ordered and not paid for at least 10 times in the last couple of years.
I think we have to remember that Folksy is essentially an online shopping site and is aimed at online buyers.
There are many ways to shop ‘offline’ if buyers choose, but I don’t think we should expect Folksy to accommodate everyone - they should focus on offering the best service they can to their online shoppers and sellers.
Even if buyers don’t use paypal, most have either a debit card or credit card they can use at checkout - my mum’s 85 and pays by debit card instead of cheque now. You don’t need to bank online to use them.
I think if you’re a platform for sellers to sell their goods, you should be accommodating to all of the sellers customers. Not all of my customers can or will use PayPal, so it would lose me custom and force me to find another platform (which is a shame because I love folksy).
I totally agree with what you say, but not everyone is like your mum (good for her!! ) I wish they were. It would be easier for me if everyone used PayPal, but the fact is, they don’t, and I am not going to accept loss of custom because Folksy won’t let my customers pay by their chosen method. It would deffo work for a lot of sellers, but not necessarily for us all. I cannot understand, why a system that works for a huge selling platform like eBay cannot work here. On ebay you are notified of a sold item before it is paid, and then have an option to send an invoice or mark it as paid after that fact if a paypal payment isn’t received. The occasional non-paying buyer is a fact of life and no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Losing my customers, is a very big deal to me and so I feel I have to fight this change - or move elsewhere
Ebay is an exception though because they are also an auction site. Many buyers win auctions without being at the computer and therefore their system is set up to accommodate payment after the ‘sale’.
Folksy is an online platform for sellers to sell their goods. I’m afraid I don’t really understand the need for an online selling platform to cater to the needs of those who don’t actually want to shop online.
Many ebay sales are for buy it now prices now, not just auctions, and I sometimes sell old stuff on there, and local people will collect larger items. I then get the choice to mark the item as paid. They have the choice of how to pay. It suits us all.
Folksy is an E commerce site and a platform from which to sell, we as sellers don’t own it. If sellers want to take payments in other ways, they can do so freely from their own website or sell through facebook and have complete control to do as they please.
I agree, to a point. However, Folksy have never disallowed us to take other forms of payment before, in fact, a couple of years ago they introduced the button to allow us to mark our items as paid if payment was made through a different way than Paypal, rather than having us have to message them each time to ask them to mark it as paid for us, so at that point they obviously had no objections to payments being made in other ways.
I have always pointed customers to buy through here with the option of paying in the way of their choice simply because I have wanted to support Folksy as a UK site, and they get the commission from me for each sale (and I get plenty of sales, so I must be helping pay someone’s wages!) However, if this option is taken away I will point customers to my Etsy shop, make a custom listing for them there, remove the item from this shop, and Etsy will get the commission and I will get my sale - simples
xxxx
