Partial Payment taken - what about the balance...?

[petad]

Hi

I recently took partial payment on an order via the Order Manager, as I was only shipping part of the order. I have now come to take the remaining amount as I'm about to ship the final item, but the system is telling me I have already taken payment, and won't let me take the outstanding balance.

When I look at the transaction on PayPal, it shows as transaction completed, even though it is not the full amount that was previously authorised.

Short of contacting the customer for their payment details again (not very professional) does anyone have any suggestions how I can claim the remaining monies?

Thanks

Pete

[Dave]

Sorry Pete but I have not got a clue on this one. Have never had to part ship anything yet... Perhaps a quick call to Rich would resolve it one way or another!

[petad]

Thanks Dave

Update - Rich says it is a PayPal issue, as PayPal is returning an error code that suggests the payment is complete. I have asked PayPal for feedback on this, and will post when I get a reply.

In the interim, I have sent the customer a follow-on invoice request via PayPal, which is not great from a customer sevice perspective, but will hopefully get the cash in.

[Dave]

Thanks for the update Pete

[Angella]

I really don't think customers expect only half payment, you would be quite within your rights to take all the payment as the order has been placed and they have agreed to your terms and conditions. If we find that one of our items is temporarily out of stock, we then refund the customer and let them know when the goods are back in stock (we do not have stock enabled on our site)

Angella
www.internetwigs.com (http://www.internetwigs.com)

[petad]

we then refund the customer and let them know when the goods are back in stock
I think this approach makes sense, given the part-taking of the money doesn't seem to work. The reason we took part payment was that our terms state we will not take money until the goods are available to be supplied - we might have to rethink that in the light of recent events.

Just to finish off on this, PayPal came back and said that the customer's bank refused the second amount to be taken against the original authorisation. So I guess in some (if not all?) cases, the authorisation process only allows for a single claim against it.

Regards,

Pete

[little-linguist]

So I guess in some (if not all?) cases, the authorisation process only allows for a single claim against it.
Although I have no experience with Paypal, we used to always take part-payment when shipping part of an order (using Protx). The reason authorisation would fail on a second or third "claim" was usually due to either no available funds in the account, or the card had expired etc. since the original transaction.

We don't bother taking part payment any more. I think legally, you have 30 days to fulfil their order anyway, or longer if they agree. If we know it's going to be a while, we email to say that the item they've ordered is out of stock and should be in stock in approx xxx weeks, and if they no longer wish to wait they may cancel at any time.