I have done this recently - I had to type in my address once, but after going to paypal and paying the first seller, I was redirected back to the list of things in my basket. the first clearly said I had paid, the second had a ‘pay’ button, which took me straight to the paypal login again.
It was quite straightforward. But then, I was expecting to have to do two separate paypal payments and I was watching carefully because I know some people have problems.
My guess is some people don’t realise you have to go into paypal for each seller, so they stop and close their browser after the first paypal payment, before they are redirected back to the basket page; or there is a ‘redirect’ glitch because their internet connection is momentarily slow or something, and they get stuck there; or they do get back to the basket page and they just don’t spot that they haven’t paid for the remaining items because they aren’t expecting it.
i do think the Buyer’s ‘Thank You For Buying’ email could be clearer. It’s only half way down that there’s a little bit saying ‘if you haven’t paid yet…’ which is easy to miss. Is it possible to detect whether they have paid and if not, send a ‘Thank you, but you need to pay for this item before you have actully bought it’ email with the link in?
If you have a paypal account ie not paying via paypal’s guest thingie you don’t have to fill out your address you skip that section and go straight to paypay.
The section asking for your address is only for those who don’t have a paypal account so are using paypal as a guest.
in the last 5 days i have had one buyer place an order for 2 of my cards. . . i emailed 2 days ago and still no word and still have awaiting payment. Might have to cancel but i think i will wait one more day before i do. . . Really annoying!!
James thank you the response. I’m typing with difficulty as on my phone (laptop drank too much coffee and is comatose )
I still have a major problem if you remove the ordered before payment email. I have at least 1 of your <2% ‘non-payers’ a month.
I would lose most of those sales, a lot of goodwill and my own and Folksy reputation as well as potential repeat business, if I did not, as I nearly always successfully do, chase up with a polite explanation and instructions on how to complete the order and payment.
My non- payers have not changed their mind they simply have had a hiccup within the order/ payment process which the current system does not handle.
Please do not remove those emails.
Sorry can’t respond better but technically challenged until I have a keyboard again. Xx
If you order from multiple sellers you currently have to pay them individually, yes. We’re looking to move towards PayPal’s new API which would allow multiple orders in one payment. We are currently awaiting confirmation from PayPal as to whether PayPal Postage is supported in the other API (It didn’t used to be and the documentation is not clear on this).
PayPal Postage was something sellers stated they wanted to keep when we migrated to use the other API that did allow multiple orders a couple of years ago - so we had to roll the work back.
I doubt this would be the case Joy as we’ll be improving communications. For the reasons stated earlier we will be moving toward only contacting sellers once the buyer has paid. We’ve been doing quite a bit of research into the PayPal payments process and other than obscure platforms not being supported the only reason we can find for failed payments at the PayPal stage is that people don’t want to use PayPal or can’t remember their login details and try to checkout as a guest (but are pushed back into login as they are using an email address that is already registered). Our interests in maximising sales are very much tied to yours and we’ll make sure we do everything possible to get buyers paying!
I’m so glad Folksy will be doing this soon instead (points 1-3) - it makes much more sense and I think better for the buyer.
It’s still concerning that customers have issues on checkout. Checkout should be as simple a process as possible, it’s what customers expect, and I know I have lost an order in the past because something went awry. People like simplicity, and glitches will more than likely turn them off to shopping here - they have a choice and may choose to shop elsewhere. I know I would. I’d think well if you can’t sort your checkout out I’m not shopping with you as I would expect more from an online store and it gives me a bad impression (sorry, but true).
Are there any updates on if and/or when this change will be implemented @JamesB ?
I’ve just had an order come through where the entire address field is intentional gobbledygoop (asadfdsfsg etc etc). This is clearly not an actual order and these sort of curious shenanigans shouldn’t result in an item being removed from sale.
Oddly I got a ‘genuine’ non payer today. Quite early in the morning with an obviously wrong emal address - I don’t think "Peter@gmail.com" is going to find anyone and a town of England instead of Bath was a bit off too. I sent my usual no payment, may I help you email but didn’t expect any response as there is a 0% chance that the email will get to anyone with an email address like that.
What annoying things people do when they’re bored in the early hours !
Fortunately I get very, very few ‘customers’ like this.
I had a non-payer the other day who then went on to find my website, but I’d already sent the email asking if everything was ok, and she said she’d had problems completing the payment here. Her exact words were ‘disappointing and frustrating’ . As she’d then gone on to order from my website, I wasn’t going to get into the detail of what had gone wrong for her. I thought I’d better leave her with the ‘better experience’ of my website than dragging up what happened here for her again. There is something odd with the checkout process here. It’s not the first time I’ve had people say they’ve had problems, and that’s only the ones that actually get back to you because they really want the item they’re trying to buy. And these aren’t technophobes, so it’s not that they’ve become confused or don’t understand how a checkout works.
Bumping this… as I just saw one of my items on the front page apparently ‘Being bought now’ but no order showing on my dashboard and no congratulations email from Folksy.
@JamesB - have you now implemented the ‘we won’t email sellers until payment is complete’ feature??
The e-mails are still coming at the moment. I had one this morning to say I’d sold something but the buyer had not paid (first time this has happened to me although I’d read lots about it). I did e-mail the buyer to ask if there was a payment problem but it turned out to be a genuine change of mind (they realised the item was smaller than they first thought). Nice of them to take the trouble to reply. I was really disappointed though as I was so excited when I saw my sales had gone up by one only to discover it wasn’t really a sale
I had my first in a while this morning. Emailed buyer but no reply yet. Glad I still get notified though, so I could see if I could salvage the sale, given sales don’t come in as frequently as they once did and this was for one of my priciest items.
Yes, had 3 sales this year, all not paid, the first 2 never answered my emails to them, the 3rd, a month or so back, had not paid by the end of the day, so thinking “here we go again”, I cancelled the sale…the customer emailed me to ask why I had cancelled, so I told them it had not been paid for, which they denied, saying I should check my bank because they had their paypal money taken,all seemed a bit wet, and not heard from them again !!!
@JamesB I don’t know if this helps, but you might be interested to know that today I am having the same problems trying to pay for something on ebay: from checkout I select Paypal, enter login details, and get thrown back to ebay which has signed me out in the meantime. It HAS to be something wrong in whatever passes the details from one site to the next.
My Paypal account is working fine, and their helpdesk say it is an ebay issue. Only solution ebay helpdesk can come up with is to ask the seller to invoice me directly.
Woken up to another Folksy ‘someone has bought your work email’ with no payment coming through.
Trying to save the sale but as it’s from down under will have to wait a few hours until they’ve woken up to be able to try and salvage it.
If the buyer does come back I will ask her for details of what went wrong at her end and let you know @JamesB
