One point to add - I really think that there are a lot of sellers out there who, on receiving the notification and no payment do nothing about it. They therefore assume that the buyer has changed their mind. They often complain about it in the forum and an extensive debate follows with a lot of umming and aaahing as to whether to contact the customer or not. In most cases they leave it too late for the customer to use their emailed payment link.
In my (extensive) experience, the non-payment, in the vast majority of cases, is Not a change of mind but a payment hiccup.
If buyers donāt chase up, and as Iāve said, many appear not to bother, then your perception of non-paid sales may well be badly distorted by their comments. If I get a minute Iāll try to sort out all my ālateā payers and send you the emails.
Joy
PS A number of my customers pay by cheque as though they are happy going through the order process they donāt like to use Paypal. It may be an age thing but I will not age discrimate against my customers. If they want to send a cheque then that is fine by me and no problem for Folksy as I always mark the order as paid and pay my commission.
oajortmajoirty nemntuymrxpseie = the rubbish I collect as a result of touch typing which I normally delete but thought Iād leave it for you.
Silly story butā¦ i used to send long explanatory emails to my European IT customers. I once forgot to delete the long collection of spurious characters on the end and had an email query back from the French customer asking for a translation. 
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Thank you Joy, you put it so much more eloquently than me, and argued my points brilliantly - hereās to the oldies, and to keeping their custom (raises virtual glass) - Iām tee-total so itās only water, but itās the thought that counts, right? 
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Itās not just the oldies that donāt like using Paypal - a couple of my customers are relatively young (20s and 30s) and after having had Paypal hassles and online banking issues they just donāt want to use it any more.
Oh well, I guess my customers who usually select their items to get the total and postage and then message me to send a cheque will just have to deal with me by email if Folksy donāt want to let use give them another option for paying. My best customer doesnāt use Paypal any more - she usually spends Ā£40 - Ā£5 at a time, and I ask her to purchase via Folksy and then send me the payment to mark it paid. Iāll just deal with her privately and save myself paying any commission
Just had a portrait order and the customers card wasnāt accepted when she tried to pay - I had the cheque delivered today. Could have saved myself even more commission and just done the sale through Facebookā¦
What Iām trying to say is, we, the sellers (or some of us anyway) who get quite a few sales and therefore help Folksy survive as a business, have always tried to deal fairly with you. We encourage people to use the site, we make the sales through here, even though we could do so privately, so that Folksy gets the commission and survives as a selling platform. If you donāt want us to do that, then fine. We can deal with the sales off site, and just remove the items from our shops - which is what James accused us of earlier, which we hadnāt actually been doing! But heck - why should we lose our customers just because they arenāt bothered about our custom?
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Not sure about many, but Iāve seen the odd seller who doesnāt know whether or not to contact someone in the event of non-payment. To be fair, who can blame them. Itās an unusual situation to be put into as a seller to have to email someone to let them know they havenāt actually paid for the item they ordered.
My experience is the complete opposite to yours though. I always email promptly and have never once received a reply and thus always end up cancelling the order. I find it frustrating as Folksy is the only site that I sell on where I sometimes have to micromanage what should be a straightforward process.
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I couldnāt agree with you more, and very well put!
It should also be considered that every custom order I get from Facebook, I encourage the buyer to head over to Folksy to buy it, and I list the order on here - Folksy have done nothing to earn that commission, but I always try to support them, and the other Folksy sellers by encouraging folk to buy through folksy instead of direct from me. If these changes happen, then I will no longer do this, even for Paypal custom orders, Iāll send them a Paypal invoice to pay me direct, and Folksy can be limited to the commission they get from me through their natural footfall.
Once my custom orders and non PayPal orders are removed from here, my sales will become very bleak, and decisions about if Folksy is worth the effort will have to be made.
Listening to the voices of a few folk who come on here every other day for a little gripe about nowt, instead of listening to their more experienced sellers like yourself, might be a big mistake. Time will tell I guess.
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Iāve never had one of those āsold but not quite soldā emails, though few of my sales are on Folksy these days 
I can understand it might cause confusion.
However, on the other site I almost lost a sale because I DIDNāT have a āsale in progressā type email. Luckily the lovely customer took it upon herself to contact me and explain that she urgently wanted to buy X but was having problems at checkout, and we sorted it out.
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Same here, if I send an email they never get back to me and if Iām honest, it feels creepy, desperate and spammy, but thatās just me, I think it might depend on what you are selling.
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What is ācreepy, desperate and spammyā about sending a friendly email to a potential customer asking if the need any help? Mine are usually along the lines of:
āHi, I noticed you were trying to make a purchase in my Folksy shop of ***** but the order wasnāt completed to payment. If you are having trouble at the checkout and need a hand completing the payment just let me know, but if you have simply changed your mind and no longer wish to make the purchase thatās fine, and if you can confirm that you no longer want the item Iāll cancel the order to return the item to my shop. Kind Regardsā¦ā
Only on a couple of times in over 1,100 sales have I had no reply, some have replied to say theyāve changed their minds, so they get a nice friendly āthank you for letting me knowā email, and the rest have been people where the Paypal connection hasnāt worked, their internet went down, their card wouldnāt be accepted, or they simply didnāt realise they hadnāt completed the transaction, and all of those went on to finish their purchases.
Those of us who contact our customers over uncompleted purchases are providing a good customer service. Those who ignore these potential customers are not. Simples.
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Here is an example of a reply I got to one of my emails last week, this was from a return customer, who had paid by PayPal on previous occasions, so this could happen to any seller on here. Obviously my emails arenāt āCreepy, desperate, or spammyā enough to scare them off 
āHiya, I ordered two necklaces from your folksy store this morning but had trouble checking out, it kept telling me there was an error and to check back later- was gutted! But Iāve just had an email from you saying you had the order still, but no payment. how can I give you my monies please?!ā
I sent the buyer a PayPal invoice, which she paid immediately, and I marked the order as paid. The buyer got her necklaces, I kept my customer, and Folksy got their commission. As you can see from the message, it was only my email that prompted her to make payment, so I couldnāt agree with you more. A friendly email is all it takes, and is really no hardship as a seller. It happens occasionally, and when it does, I think a friendly email from the seller, rather then a stock email from folksy (as is being proposed) is more personal and nicer for the buyer to receive
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Hi Sara, thatās kind of almost exactly the same as emails I have sent to folks who didnāt manage to complete. Iām writing in this forum about how I personally feel and it feels creepy and spammy to me.
My items are extremely different to yours and I suspect my customers are very different types, so they rarely get back to me. We have a different experience as sellers Xxx
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@ Bobbyās My emails are very kind and polite, please donāt attack me as a person, I am a very kind sensitive person. I do not scare people off, I care about my work and my customers.
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I would never dream of attacking anyone as a person! And am very upset at the accusation. It was YOU who said it felt creepy, desperate and spammy to send emails. I was merely pointing out that customers (mine at least) donāt see it that way. My apologies if it was taken the wrong way, it was not intended as a personal attack or insult. It is here that I leave the conversation for good. As always happens, things are misunderstood and I end up coming across as the bad guy because my humour is lost in translation. Good luck with this whole issue guys, I hope a solution that works for everyone is found.
I will not be returning to this forum, I said that once before, and this issue pulled me back in. I just get so fed up of people misunderstanding what is being said. Please donāt reply as I wonāt be responding. āI do not scare people offā Well done, you just didā¦
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I have removed this post.
Thatās great for you Sara, but the topic of this thread is about the potential to improve the order process to avoid ending up with these type of orders. It is not about the best way to deal with them. Nor is it about your perceived level of customer service versus other sellers.
The issue of people abandoning their baskets is separate to the issue of Folksy sellers receiving orders that are not paid for.
As James pointed out
Folksy already see it as a problem.
Aside from the ability for sellers to be able to accept methods of payment other than PayPal which, as we have already discussed, could be solved with the optional addition of an āotherā payment button, do you have any argument for why this problem should not be solved?
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So what - weāre not allowed to discuss these issues when they crop up? Isnāt that what conversation and debate is about? Life would be pretty boring if we only ever stuck to discussing narrow topics and never expanding!
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I think a lot of us have taken the ācreepy, spammy etcā line that you wrote to imply those of us who follow up non-payers write this kind of email (we donāt) and the way you worded it made it sound like you think that about us, so naturally we feel offended by the phrasing.
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There are many other threads in this forum where that issue can be discussed.
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Iām just relating my own feelings on chasing people when they havenāt gone through to checkout, it has nothing to do with how anyone else conducts business.
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Iām not actually selling at the minute but plan to again once
a) Iāve finished decorating and my house isnāt a bombsite, and
b) Chloeās through the AQE
So Iāll way in too.
I quite liked getting the āsomeone has ordered your workā email, some of my customers like to pay by transfer, itās quick and simple, something theyāre used to doing and itās a method of payment I was happy to offer then I could just mark an item paid and get on with shipping it.
Having said that if it changes so that we would only be notified once an item has been paid for Iād be perfectly happy with Melanieās suggestion of an āopt inā other payment option then I would still be able to just email the iban details to the customer and carry on as normal.
I was never one for emailing non paying buyers either partly because, like Susan, it just never sat well with me, it felt a bit like chasing for payment. But mostly it was because in truth I really never considered an item āorderedā until it had been paid for ā¦ reserved maybe but not ordered.
Iāve seen so many comments over the years here and on the old forums that an item shouldnāt be ordered until itās paid for ā¦ it shouldnāt be taken out of stock, shouldnāt be unavailable for another customer to buy for 24 hours etc and I would have agreed with much of that. Iām trying to explain this as well as I can in writing, itās always easier in person but I suppose I just never felt like I could consider an item not ordered enough for it to be taken out of my shop but ordered enough for me start emailing a person asking if they still wanted to pay for it. It has to be one or other, not both, a customer has either ordered or they havenāt ā¦ so I just cancelled any unpaid orders (admittedly there were never many) and sometimes the person reordered later and sometimes they didnāt.
So anyway yep, Melanieās suggestion seems like a great fix for me if itās possible to do this then Iām a happy camper.
I did not read what Susan said as implying that the email contents were creepy or spammy, more the fact that one has to contact a person unsolicited - My non payers usually do pay in the end , but it still doesnāt feel right emailing them - it didnāt feel so awkward when we had the Folksy messaging system.
