when is the customer charged?

[tarik]

as many of you know, most etailers charge their customers cards when the order has been confirmed/dispatched.
with my current shopping cart
i have orders pending then confirmed and then dispatched
how does it work with actinic.
say for example i have sagepay or actinic payments is the customer charged right away or are they charged when the order is confirmed/dispatched.
thanks

[Duncan Rounding]

You can do either. You can take the payment immediately or pre-authorise and then wait and put the payment through when despatched. I think immediate payment should only really be taken when you have physically have the stock and can ship right away otherwise you pre-authorise.

[tarik]

yes i am thinking more for things like pre orders where things wont need payment upfront but when its ready for dispatch as sometimes pre orders are months before items are available.
thanks for your help

[Duncan Rounding]

In that case you would need to create another payment option such as 'pay later' then when the goods arrive you would have to contact the customer and take payment over the phone as CNP.

Search the forum for pre-ordering or similar as there have been many threads in the past about this that may have more useful information.

[tarik]

ok thanks drounding will do that now. calling each customer for payment might not really be a feasible option

[Sean Williams]

We use Secure Hosting as our payment gateway and everything is pre-authorised only, then authorised just prior to despatch.
Some of our backorders can take three months to ship, but with Secure Hosting, we can make an Additional Transaction to the customer's card (as the original pre-auth only lasts for 28 days).
It works well so long as the customer's card is still in date / hasn't been nurfed and replaced.
Don't forget, under the DSR's you can take payment at the time of order for Special or Customised orders. If you have products you sell infrequently and wouldn't like to be left with if a customer cancels during a three month backorder delay, you can designate them a Special Order, which obliges the customer to take delivery of the goods and render them non-returnable.
We use this sometimes when we get orders for rare stuff, or off the wall colour combinations.

[tarik]

We use Secure Hosting as our payment gateway and everything is pre-authorised only, then authorised just prior to despatch.
Some of our backorders can take three months to ship, but with Secure Hosting, we can make an Additional Transaction to the customer's card (as the original pre-auth only lasts for 28 days).
It works well so long as the customer's card is still in date / hasn't been nurfed and replaced.
Don't forget, under the DSR's you can take payment at the time of order for Special or Customised orders. If you have products you sell infrequently and wouldn't like to be left with if a customer cancels during a three month backorder delay, you can designate them a Special Order, which obliges the customer to take delivery of the goods and render them non-returnable.
We use this sometimes when we get orders for rare stuff, or off the wall colour combinations.

currently everything we sell is held in stock and if it isnt its still dispatched in 2-3 days max. Im just thinking about if we expanded our portfolio in the future to selling games and dvds/blu rays with pre orders etc then i think 28 day pre auth would be ok i think.

[cbarling]

The rules say you can't charge for items until they are despatched, but many people charge immediately if the items are always sent in a day or two and the values are small.

I was at a conference and one of the major players stated that they charged on receipt of order, and had only had three complaints over 18 million orders. However, when they took over a company that sold much more expensive items, they found they couldn't charge until they actually despatched the goods, else thye received loads of complaints.

On "special orders" that are built to order and can take time, Actinic Payments allows a pre-authorisation to be processed up to 3 months after the order (and we are considering increasing that). It's available through the Actinic user interface so it just requires a click. However, depending on the policy of your bank, there may be a surcharge for commiting pre-authorisations after their 3 day official expiry. If the three months has passed you can still use the "pay" button to take the payment so it's all pretty tight.

Chris

Chris

[tarik]

thanks chris, im going to have a word with Bank of Scotland to see how long their pre-auth lasts as thats who we are going with for our merchant services and then sagepay for the processing at the moment.