Feature to pay the minimum order?

Brickipedia

Hi all!
Lately, I’ve had a customer who says there needs to be a feature to bring the cart up to the minimum order. They only wanted one piece and told me to re-sell the other £0.48 worth of pieces. I completely agree, do you think this could be something that is looked into?

P6tu

Yeah, this discusion has been here before actually. The outcome of this discussion in the past was to give ghe ability to sellers to have a dummy item that would be priced according to the customers need. This is somewhat a common issue for us (buyers) that we need one specific part from the seller and then add some random mumbo-jumbo to the order, only to discover that adding that other mumbo-jumbo, it increases the shipment fee and then we loose the whole point and aquiring one 50 cent piece wil become costing tens of €€€ instead of the actual few € that it would take in reality with the minimum buyout.

I fully understand from buyers perspective that it is not reasonable to just sell one 5 cent piece and a minimum order limit is there for a reason, but sometimes it becomes an issue...

Brickipedia

Thanks, our store has a minimum order of £0.50 ($0.63). This is to cover the PayPal fee. My store is Brickipedia if you want to see what I mean.

Malnaborg

If you search here on the forum with "minimum order" You will get numerous topics about this.

The last talk / discussion i took part in, ended actually with a new feature about "banning" those stores with "minimum buy" before an order could be accepted. Many buyers just as you describe have the problem with only wanted specific bricks, and should not be forced to buy anything extra.

There was also talk about this "minimum buy" being misused, as stores could just have strange high prices to get extra money and sales for nothing in particular. And then as P6tu writes the whole new problem with either a fake part or something would mess up the order, weight or statistic for parts being sold.

So all in all, it actually ended out in that, stores with minimum buy for an order have made so many problems in the past, that a wishlist feature was made to remove those stores from the list, because it just made it harder to buy from these.


So to help you out, or your future buyers, would be to remove your minimum buy for a set period, and then ask your buyer to purchase those parts they want, put in an order and finish it. Then after that, you can reinstate your minimum buy feature for your store.

That ended up being the best solution for stores here on Brickowl, last time this topic was ongoing.

Brickipedia

Thanks, but while I appreciate buyers find the minimum order a challenge, our store has to pay PayPal Fee (£0.36), and then commission and VAT (£0.02) and then wages, so all told the store will get paid around £0.11! So that’s why our store has the minimum buy, because otherwise the costs listed above come out of the shipping price!

Jay37

At the risk of ruffling a few feathers, if stores have a minimum order limit (for whatever reason, covering fees, making order picking worth their while if time is limited, etc), then doesn't the suggestion to temporarily suspend this for one customer, then reinstate it afterwards, kind of defeat the object of having it? What it seems to say is that this customer is worthy of changing my terms for, or only if they ask, but no-one else is. And what happens if during this window of opportunity another customer places a low value order? Will that one be honoured too? If you do it for them this time, will they demand it of you again, maybe on multiple occasions? How do you know that the customer will be ready to place their order at precisely the time you agree so that the sale takes place and store settings reverted back? All of this effort has a 'cost', mainly in time taken sending and responding to messages.

It all seems like a lot of faffing around that could simply be solved by the customer finding a store that has the part and doesn't have a minimum order limit. Granted, the part in question could be rare or only available in that store, but in this instance having a value of 2p suggests not (but without knowing what it is I may be wrong).

As sellers we choose our settings based on our personal circumstances and what we are happy (or not happy) to do, and sometimes these don't meet a customer's requirements, but I think it slightly undermines things when you don't stick to these. If you want to keep everyone happy, then don't set limits. If you do want to set limits you have to accept that some customers won't be able to buy from your store.

P6tu

This is probably kind of endless discussion - there are caveats at every end .
By the end of the day, easier for everyone would be to buy besides that needed part a random pricey minifig part and that is that.

Malnaborg

Exactly Jay37. There are so many variations of this.
So again as i wrote last time. The store owner simply must just reject the customer, and the customer must hopefully find another place to shop.

For some store owners, they have "whatever" reason for the minimum buy. That means sometimes they lose a sale, and customer. Of cause it might cost them more to fulfill the order, but in the end, this was why the "remove minimum stores" was added to the wishlist, because it simply messed more up for the customer than it did good.

Me personally, i would rather pay a bigger shipping fee/price and then only buying what i need, then using my time at a store trying to find whatever brick to be able to buy from that store.

Brickipedia

Thanks @Jay37 and all for your help.