Adjust invoice for additional fees (packaging & transaction fees)

BrickHunters.be

Dear BrickOwlers,

We are relatively new to BrickOwl, and have been booking our stock in for quite some time. Recently we have been stumbling upon a few orders and that makes us very content. Great website with an awesome interface, big props to the developers. There are many websites out there that could be good to learn from BrickOwl.

There is however a small detail we cannot seem to find, and maybe it just has not been implemented for a reason.

We, as a starting little company, still charge our customers for the PayPal fee that is demanded of us. On other websites (we will not name them) there are possibilities to adjust the invoice prior to sending it to the customer to add additional (variable) packing & transaction fees.

Is there such an option in BrickOwl? Everytime we receive an order, I am unable to change fundamental things, like shipping prices(for example: whenever the customer had wrongly selected the shipping fee and had liked a tracked alternative).

Many thanks for taking the time to read this!
Brick Hunters

Ems Bricks

Hi and welcome to Brick Owl. I include a small flat fee within my shipping costs, which covers fees and packing. The advantage with this site is that buyers can see upfront what their final payment will be. If I have ever needed further payment from customers (very rare), I use the "request money" in PayPal. I don't have tracking selected as a shipping option, but have a note on my checkout to contact me if they prefer tracking.

Hope that helps.

robernat

@BrickHunters
basic idea on brickowl: no fees...
Just shipping and handling (so work a small fee into you shippingcosts).

Since you're located in Belgium: My shipping and handling are presetted (and well balanced) and public, so you can copy them (and edit them if you like, mine include a 0.50 Euro handling for each method). And I have settings for both regular shipment and with tracking, so buyers can choose between the 2 options, I rarely get quotes anymore (the latter manily due to large packages or if something in the potential order has no known size and/or weight). All my presetted shippingmethods work well for all destinations (they have been 'tuned' over the course of 2014) so no worries there ;-)

In regards to PP fees itself: just add it in the cost of your items and set a 'minimum', basicly 5-7-10 Euro as minimum is enough (together with the handling fee) to have balanced orders. When people select IBAN, you make a little more as you have less costs.

Cheers, Eric

robernat

PS forgot to mention:
You can also set a threshold for ordervalues, so that orders of a certain value obliges the customer to only have 'shipment with tracking' as option (no regular shipment), mine is set at 40 Euro, you can set whatever you're comfortable with (so it means I'm comfortable shipping out orders up to 40 Euro without tracking, but above that amount I want safety for myself by obliging tracking)

Stragus

You need to include all your "fees" in your prices or in the shipping rate. You can' t have extra hidden fees here.

Let buyers choose everything when placing orders, if they would like tracking or not, by setting up multiple shipping methods. You shouldn't have to change anything on orders that have already been placed (and paid!).

BrickHunters.be

Okay that we understand. It is somehow bizarre for us to offer more expensive prices on one selling portal in comparison to the other. I am sure this will cause some confusion on the side of our customers at one point. But I will try to explain it. Maybe someday we will be covering all PayPal fees ourselves.

Hoddie

Remember that it is no longer permissible in the EU to charge an additional fee simply because the buyer selected a particular method of payment, unless the additional fee represents the actual exact extra cost of processing that method of payment. Many BL sellers based in the EU are now breaking the law in this regard.

robernat

@Hoddie
Where can one find that new EU regulation ?

Hoddie

The Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, effective June 2014.

Part of this was the prohibition on charging excessive payment fees. The UK transposed this particular part of the Directive into law back in 2013:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/3110/made

"A trader must not charge consumers, in respect of the use of a given means of payment, fees that exceed the cost borne by the trader for the use of that means."

Teup

Okay that we understand. It is somehow bizarre for us to offer more expensive prices on one selling portal in comparison to the other. I am sure this will cause some confusion on the side of our customers at one point. But I will try to explain it. Maybe someday we will be covering all PayPal fees ourselves.

I don't think you owe any explanation, it's all a matter of supply and demand. There are plenty of businesses that have for example an online and an offline component that have completely different prices, or webstores that double as a wholesale supplier and ask vastly different prices in each niche. It is completely up to the customer to determine where they're going to shop and what they consider to be good prices
I do think it's awkward that with Brickowl's uniform system the non-PayPal payers end up paying the fees of the PayPal payers, but I guess that's just the way it is. Similarly some orders are alot of work to pick and others are easy, the average work you spend determine what your prices will be so the easy order will also be overpaid a little compared to the laborious order. It's never 100% fair but as long as the customer agrees to what they will pay it is at least fair enough.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/3110/made

That's a useful link. I only wish Dutch PayPal would update their website because currently the transaction costs listed there are a mess and are also partially incorrect. It's currently impossible to know beforehand how high fees are going to be, and that's of course and administrative disaster. I've been calling with them 3 times and they still haven't fixed it.

robernat

@Hoddie: it's a directive, one would still need to examine the exact wording in each individual country from the EU. What is written in the UK law around it is quite clear for me: you cannot 'overcharge', but it doesn't mean one can't charge 'at all', it just can't be excessive... So if the mean (PP for example) involve a cost of 3.4%+0.35 fixed, you cannot charge 5% to your customers for example as that would exceed the real cost for the use of such payment form.
It also doesn't say one would need to charge the same amount for all payment methods, as the costs differ, so one could still charge different costs for different payment types, as IBAN is free (in most cases), the charged cost could be 0 (zero), PP is not, so as long the trader doesn't overcharge it's still allowed (at least that's what I understand from it, Native Englishmen may correct me offcourse)

Hoddie

That's exactly it, you are permitted to pass on the charge, but not more than it actually costs. The rules are the same across the EU, though some countries, when transposing the Directive into national law, may have gone further than the Directive required. Technically speaking there are other requirements that no EU BrickOwl store is meeting, which means they're breaking the law. I posted quite a bit about this back in June and don't fancy going over it all again. I keep abreast of such legislation though because I help family members who run online stores.