Order merging thoughts

Lawrence

I wanted to ask peoples opinions on having an "order merging fee". There is a bit of an issue with order merging and instant payment where people like PayPal/stripe will charge a per transaction fee around £0.30 for example. This causes a problem when someone wants to add a £0.05 part to an order as the transaction fee would result in no payment.

For some stores who only sell sets for example, this probably will not be a problem, but for parts stores may sometimes be an issue. I thought maybe an optional order merging fee to cover the transaction cost could deal with this.

When a customer attempts to make a second order in a store and they already have a pending order, they will be asked if they want to merge with the existing order. If they choose to do this, they will be charged the cost of the items plus the difference in shipping, plus the merging fee. The customer will see the order merging fee included in the shipping and handling cost, it will not be shown separately anywhere so hopefully should not lead to confused/annoyed customers.

Any thoughts on this?

misbi

That sounds like a good solution to me.

theHellmouth

Yes indeed, that would work perfectly for me too.

walstib

No issues here with the fee but some questions come to mind.

Fixed or used defined?

Would the merge require approval or be a choice for each store to accept these or not?

What is the mechanism for stopping it from happening? No more merging after processing has been clicked?

Thanks

DagsBricks

I don't think the fee should be extortionate. I'm fine with a 30c or whatever the local fee for processing another payment is. But it will probably stifle any tiny parts order additions.

I would say once "Processed" is clicked that it should create a new order. My packages get sealed at this point.

Brian

Lawrence

Fee will be of course user-defined, it will vary depending on the payment method and the country the store is in. Merging in general will be optional for the store. Marking an order as processing will prevent merging.

DadsAfol

$.30 fee is fine. Can you make the merge/don't merge status choice optional? For us, "processing" means we printed the pick list, so for us that would be okay to add to for us. "processed" means packed and postage applied, so that would not work for additions.

Thanks.

misbi

For us, "processing" means we printed the pick list, so for us that would be okay to add to for us. "processed" means packed and postage applied, so that would not work for additions.
Thanks.

That's the same for us, so my initial thought was that we'd be happy to accept additions to 'processing' orders.

What isn't clear though, is whether additional quantities ordered will be 'merged' with existing quantities (as the term suggests), or whether additional quantities will be 'batched' as separately identifiable groups.

I'm thinking that Lawrence has merging without batching in mind, hence the processing status being the cut off point for additions.

If that's the case, then accepting additions would necessitate manual double checking for any changes to original quantity, so upon reflection, we wouldn't actually want to accept additions at this stage after all.

SuperBrick

I personally would have no problems with order merging until the order status has been changed to processed. Ideally the seller should be able to set the order status for which they still allow merging.

When there is a merged order it should be easy to see which items were added to the order both when viewing the order on screen and when using the API to download the order. This would allow sellers to continue syncing their inventory to different sites and would facilitate the picking of orders when the original order has already been picked before it was merged with a new order.

DagsBricks

I'm thinking that Lawrence has merging without batching in mind, hence the processing status being the cut off point for additions.

If that's the case, then accepting additions would necessitate manual double checking for any changes to original quantity, so upon reflection, we wouldn't actually want to accept additions at this stage after all.

Good point. I would hope that order batching would make additions of the same part easier to spot.

Brian

Badlove

Small fee to merge sounds like a great idea. When it is processing this would be no problem at all but when processed it would work only if the addition doesn't change the weight drastically because at that point postage is already printed. Definitely need some kind of order merge though.
James

Lawrence

You guys have made clear you all use your order status is a little bit different so you can now specify the status where you want order combining to be prevented. The settings for this stuff are in your order settings screen.

These orders will be totally separate orders, simply where the new order gets reduced shipping

The system is finished but I'm going to make it more robust before making a live.

Badlove

Brilliant.
Thanks
James

theHellmouth

Could you add another option on the buyer side to let them choose to start a new order? I've had some buyers who ordered up to a specific weight (to keep shipping cost low) and then placed a second order. It seems funny for them to have wait till I set their order to processing/processed in order to buy some more.

theHellmouth

Ah, read this back:

"When a customer attempts to make a second order in a store and they already have a pending order, they will be asked if they want to merge with the existing order."

So they will have that choice? Because from the last posts it seems it will trigger always depending on the order status.

misbi

By default, additions will always be possible (assuming that you opted in). It's only the prevention of additions that's triggered by order status of processed or processing if you so chose.

Lawrence

The buyer has a choice whether to combine or not. I have made this live for now but will keep working on it.

misbi

I can't imagine a scenario where a buyer wouldn't want to combine, but opt for double P&P

Lawrence

The most likely scenario is they want to place a second order to a different address. When the customer is advised they can combine the shipping, they are informed it must be to the same address and they will not be given any control over the address.

misbi

Aha - I knew there would be something I'd missed.

theHellmouth

@brickcounter: two separate orders could have a lower postage if that means those can be sent by bubble mailer instead of package. In Belgium this is the case: our package costs are easily 4 times the cost to ship a simple envelop.

misbi

Missed that scenario too

Badlove

I have a customer that placed an order, then added another and then a third. Each time he chose to merge the order and it charged him the full shipping amount. I thought it was just supposed to charge the small fee plus any difference in shipping.
James

Lawrence

I will contact you directly as it seems to be working okay on other stores.