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Pay what you want pricing


jimlongo

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Is there any support for, or addons that would enable a product with a variable price.

That is a text input so the person could pay whatever amount they want.

I often have customers who for one reason or another owe me a balance on some transactions.  The amount always varies. Normally I have to send them a form so they can send me credit card details and I manually go to my Merchant account and charge the CC the amount owing . . . total pita.  So what I'd like is a catalog item with a text input as a price, they could enter whatever that balance owing amount is.

 

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Are you really looking for a way for a customer to take care of resolving a balance owed (to you)? You're talking about a dummy product (nothing actually shipped) that could have any price? They actually have to pay you, so something based on a voucher or gift card system wouldn't work. Do they order often enough that you could offer to add the balance to their next order (I'm not sure I'd do it automatically -- it might be a legal problem)? Maybe you could have a dummy product for $0.01 that authorizes payment for the existing balance (less one cent). You'd have to show the balance to them and get their OK (they might want to make a partial payment).

All this assumes you have a new field with "outstanding balance owed by customer" in the customer table.

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15 hours ago, jimlongo said:

Is there any support for, or addons that would enable a product with a variable price.

Veriable price 😊 is a simple thing to achive if your willing to do a little work!

Simply make a dummy product say " hey sucker you owe me money" and say make it $1.00

Then simply add say 10 attributes to that product incrementing in 50c then the customer simply selects that product and picks the attribute the is closest to the repayment and bingo!

 

😂 but seriously if you are owed money buy customers you need to sort out your selling process not introduce more complexity to your shop! Why are you delivering to customers who have not paid the full price?

If your happy to deliver based on proforma then you just have to suck it up and accept that some may not pay as expected. It's just a sad fact of doing business.

Also if they are repeat customers and we are talking about a few dollars or cents here and there then simply clearing the debt will show good will on your part rather than chasing a $dollar or two.

A simple solution is offered by PayPal, you can simply send the customer a payment request for the outstanding amount.

 

 

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but seriously if you are owed money buy customers you need to sort out your selling process not introduce more complexity to your shop! Why are you delivering to customers who have not paid the full price?

A sad fact of doing business indeed.  We (a tennis club) have dozens of lesson programs of various prices. Customers regularly want to switch lessons they've paid for. That creates either a balance owing or a credit on their account.  They need a way to pay the balance.  Currently I get their CC information and enter it manually into our payment processor.   I guess you're suggesting I don't allow them to switch lessons?  That's a board decision, not mine.  And it's not pennies, it's amounts up to hundreds of dollars and cents.  PayPal sounds interesting, but we don't use it.

I'm just trying to avoid the manual entry.  Currently I have a product called "balance owing" and I change the price for the use case at hand.  That's usually okay as this doesn't happen that often (and I could always create more than 1 of this "product"), but a text field for amount entry would allow the customer to pay $xx.xx for the balance owing on their account.   

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Are you really looking for a way for a customer to take care of resolving a balance owed (to you)? You're talking about a dummy product (nothing actually shipped) that could have any price?

 

Yes, they are notified they owe a balance. They need to pay it. I'm trying to make it easier for both of us. 

We don't ship any products, they are all virtual.

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Sure I understand people changing booking will cause issues with payments. Well you still have the 2 options listed above, but if you insist on having something the customer can enter an amount into you will have to look at adding that function to you cart as it's not in stock osC.

You can ask a developer to make you something or you can use an existing add-on and update/change it to your needs, This old donations add-on should be all you need just update to your requirements.

You will still need a dummy product to get them to the checkout to make the donation/ payment correction.

 

https://apps.oscommerce.com/Ppmpx

 

Oh and if you get it working why not post it back so others can make use of it.

It's interesting that on of the main competitors has a Name Your Price option 😊 "Let Customers Pay What They Want With Name Your Price"

Could be very useful if you have slots that are not popular! The customers could then offer a price to use them? May also be good for getting rid of old or dead stock, just let the customer name a price.

 

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@jimlongo , ah, you need a credit/voucher module. Someone was just asking about CCGV in this forum. Your customer is returning a "product", which you can issue a "pro-rated" refund to the account, a store credit. Now let them know the credit is in their account so they can go purchase whatever lesson it is that they want and apply the credit at checkout. 

That's how I had dealt with return/exchange, credit in the account, and cut another order and apply the credit at checkout. No mess...

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14 hours ago, clustersolutions said:

@jimlongo , ah, you need a credit/voucher module. Someone was just asking about CCGV in this forum. Your customer is returning a "product", which you can issue a "pro-rated" refund to the account, a store credit. Now let them know the credit is in their account so they can go purchase whatever lesson it is that they want and apply the credit at checkout. 

That's how I had dealt with return/exchange, credit in the account, and cut another order and apply the credit at checkout. No mess...

But, but,... the customer isn't owed money by the business -- they owe money to the business. If you can monkey the credit/voucher module to accept a negative balance, that might be added to the next order. However, if the customer wants to settle up now (might not order something for a while), they still need some sort of dummy transaction that the voucher could be added to.

If this were an uncommon event, I would just handle it manually (charging their credit card), but it sounds like it's common enough to warrant an automated method.

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4 hours ago, MrPhil said:

But, but,... the customer isn't owed money by the business -- they owe money to the business. If you can monkey the credit/voucher module to accept a negative balance, that might be added to the next order. However, if the customer wants to settle up now (might not order something for a while), they still need some sort of dummy transaction that the voucher could be added to.

Phil...I think the customer has already purchased a package but wants to buy a different one so CCGV will probably work.  You give them a credit for the package they purchased and don't want...they order the package they do want...apply the credit and pay the balance.   I think that is what the OP was saying.

Dan

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Well, that's a whole 'nuther animal. If you give them store credit towards the canceled order, and they pay any extra towards the new order at the time of the reorder, they never owe a balance. They don't have an outstanding balance (owed to the store) at any time, which was the original problem to be solved.

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I think it's a matter of store policy and work flow...the customer wouldn't owe anything until the time of purchase of the new "lesson." For us the store credit was the original order value minus the shipping and restock fee, and the customer was free to use it to buy whatever next.

6 hours ago, MrPhil said:

But, but,... the customer isn't owed money by the business -- they owe money to the business. If you can monkey the credit/voucher module to accept a negative balance, that might be added to the next order. However, if the customer wants to settle up now (might not order something for a while), they still need some sort of dummy transaction that the voucher could be added to.

If this were an uncommon event, I would just handle it manually (charging their credit card), but it sounds like it's common enough to warrant an automated method.

 

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3 hours ago, MrPhil said:

Well, that's a whole 'nuther animal. If you give them store credit towards the canceled order, and they pay any extra towards the new order at the time of the reorder, they never owe a balance. They don't have an outstanding balance (owed to the store) at any time, which was the original problem to be solved.

I think the problem was they were buying a more expensive package so they owed him the difference...he is just looking for an easy way to handle that.   I think Tim's solution is a good one.

Dan

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