Today I was the buyer when a Folksy seller almost had a sale but no payment.
Can I tell you what happened so you lovely techie people can help us out?
I had the item in my basket and went to Checkout. I confirm the order - first hurdle, it asked me to fill in my address!
Now I’m going to pay with Paypal, which already has all my address details stored. Also I’m signed in, so you should have my details on my profile too. Why do I have to manually type in my address?
Ok so I did that, and I get another confirmation screen - didn’t I already confirm two screens ago?
Finally, I’m at the point where I would expect to sign in to my Paypal account and the screen just freezes. After about ten minutes I try refresh, but that doesn’t help. I try the back button, but that says there is nothing in my basket. I open a new browser window and put in Paypal URL, and there is my order waiting for me to sign in!
I think an ordinary customer, especially if try to do this on a tablet or phone, is likely to quit at any point in that process.
Very good of you to persist. I think this episode needs emailing to folksy support so that they definately see it, they don’t always see stuff in the forums, the sooner they get on and sort it out the better for all of us.
Sasha
At various times throughout the day yesterday, I had four different items saying being bought now on front page but none converted into a sale. Do get the odd being bought now but not four in one day.
> Hi sorry to bother you, but I’ve just tried to buy a red stained glass heart from folksy site. I do not think my payment went through. I have received an e mail saying thanks for your purchase, but my internet connection crashed before I’d got the payment confirmation. Would it be possible for you to check if I have completed the payment please?
And of course the payment had not come through because it never does once the link is broken. I pointed her to the link in her email and she made the payment. @JamesB
This is just one example of a non-payer who is not a customer who changed their mind but one who encountered the Folksy / Paypal linkage failure. Fortunately the customer did want to buy the heart and did eventually manage to pay me though only after further difficulty as Paypal didn’t want to let her use her card (I note she was on her phone and I think that can often be a problem).
Yep I had one this morning - awaiting response to email. @folksycontent, @technogoggles, this seems to be happening a lot can it really be put down to buyers changing their minds?
Had an order last week from a regular customer and it took a few hours for the payment to come through seems to be a recurring problem. Probably worth contacting folksy.
@rosesworkshop thanks for sharing your experience as a buyer. I used to think buyers had changed their mind at the last minute, even though it’s a strange thing to do after they’ve gone to the trouble of typing their address in. After reading all the other seller’s posts in various threads, I’m now convinced that the link gets broken before they pay and they just give up. My hope is that Folksy will be able to find a solution (before Halloween please).
Also, I too am questioning whether buyers need to type an address in, if they can only pay via PayPal. I would like the buying process to be as simple as possible.
I bought some paper crafting bits and bobs recently when I came to pay I was a bit confused by the asking for my details when I was going to pay via paypal so I ignored that and went to pay via paypal.
As we can only pay via paypal I have no idea why that asking for our details would even be there.
There is no need for it.
It never used to be there so that’s why I was a bit surprised but decided to simply ignore the request.
If you’ve tried it yourself, as I have,. you will see that the address details you enter are not vetted in any way, shape or form. I entered mine as jj in each box, including post code and it was all accepted. So might as well leave it to Paypal really !
Something similar happened to me today, had a number of items in my basket, decided to leave a message the seller, so went to previous page, and all the items disappeared from my basket. By the time I had gotten back to the sellers shop, one of the items I wanted had been bought by someone else - very frustrating! Even more frustrating was when I checked my email account, there was a message from Folksy with the list of original items, and asking me to pay if I had not already done so! It makes you wonder how many other people have problems and just abandon the sale.
I actually had a customer have trouble paying this week, via my Etsy shop, but it might explain some here too, I don’t think she buys a lot of things online, and hasn’t changed her Paypal to automatically pay immediately, so she got the message about paying after delivery which confused her. She sent me a message saying she thought it had all gone through but she hadn’t had a confirmation. When I said it hadn’t appeared my end I think she ended up using the pay after delivery option and the payment went through. I wonder how many non-payments are still down to that Paypal change to give the customer the option to have the money come out when they receive the item. Seem like it causes a bit of confusion to whether the transaction is complete or not.
