Payments?

WESTIEKaTH

Morning all
A customer ordered items in Jan which I posted off. A week or so later, customer messaged me to say she hadn't rec'd them so I, of course refunded her as I didn't have the items to send another order away. Yesterday she messaged me to say that the order had arrived that morning post marked 22/1 so it took 2 months to arrive in the same country?? Anyway the customer kindly offered to pay me for the items - I told her as a gesture of good will and her complete honesty to keep them and not to worry about paying for them.
Now my question is - if it was a large order and this should happen again - just how could a customer repay?
Obviously I know they could pay direct into my pay pal account but I am sure this would be against Brick Owl rules?
Any ideas ?
Thanks

fitbricks

Good question.

WESTIEKaTH

Lawrence could you advise please?

Calibrick

@lawrence, I am curious, too. :-)

Calibrick

And by the way, @westiekath, what a wonderful, ethical seller you are (and your customer, too!) - good for you! I would do the same, absolutely - I think many of us would, another reason I love and appreciate this place so much. :-)

Lawrence

If you want to request payment from a customer, we usually advise the best thing to do is to send a PayPal invoice to the customers Brick Owl email address which is accessible from their contact page

White Horse Bricks

Lawrence, I think the issue is that the Brickowl order will have been cancelled, so when the customer pays the second time there will be no fees collected and you will lose out.

WESTIEKaTH

Calibrick - thanks so much for your kind words. I thought it was only right seeing as my customer had to wait so long for the order even though it wasn't my fault. I have to say I was extremely impressed by her honesty. I hope that everyone would be like that :-) This is surely the best place.

WESTIEKaTH

White Horse Bricks - yes that is exactly the point the order was cancelled and so there for if I had allowed the customer to pay again then Brick Owl would lose out. It didn't matter this time but it would be interesting to know how it could be arranged.

Calibrick

I do know in a few cases, I have gone ahead and done orders with customers that are in countries I don't normally ship to by buying the items "myself" under my own account, then noting in my bookkeeping it was really for so-and-so. Offline, I then send them a PayPal invoice for the matching amount - I also email Lawrence to let him know just to stay super transparent.

Not remotely optimal, but at least it's a workaround that still gets everyone % and protections they deserve... :-)

WESTIEKaTH

Ahhh thanks Calibrick - I never thought of that. Very much appreciated.

I also had a strange request from some one who wanted to buy items but not buy through Brick Owl through my private account - again I refused politely and explained why (payments not going through BO etc) Have to say he wasn't too pleased and couldn't understand why!!

Calibrick

@westiekath, how strange someone would NOT want to go through BO... I can't really think of a reason why someone would care offhand. Weird! I have had to turn down a few customers that do not want to work through PayPal (I'm 100% PayPal only), but I've never had anyone that wants to avoid the BO system.

WESTIEKaTH

I know Calibrick - I found it extremely strange. I am a bit dubious about them - I don't think he had a shop or anything and maybe he didn't want the bother - I haven't heard anything from him since so …………...

Calibrick

@westiekath, maybe I'm not the most trusting, but I mentally couple what you raised with @leftoverbricks forum message about a request to not include any invoicing or store indicators in an order to a customer, and I can't help but wonder if the Amazon sellers banned from Bricklink are starting to find their way over here? That would be one explanation I can think of (avoid paper trails to avoid detection). There's at least one Amazon store a few years ago that would list every LEGO item nearly ever, then have BL sellers fulfill without any invoicing or store indicators.

Then again, it could just be someone who really hates registering for web sites and contributing their personal information to any data mining/sales - all those big companies make BILLIONS off our data. :-)

WESTIEKaTH

Calibrick - wwww not that is interesting must check out that post - I didn't know that had happened being a relative newby.
I went just nosing and the person has an account on BO but no feedback - maybe they didn't want to pay the minimum order I have its only 50p. But the items he wanted came to well over 50p so this was extremely strange - prob will never find out lol. Anyway my conscience is clear and I feel I have done the right thing for Brick Owl.