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Gift vouchers

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Keith View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Keith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Gift vouchers
    Posted: 14 August 2012 at 6:59pm
I know it's been asked before but are there any plans for gift vouchers? This would be a wonderful addition as none of the coupons, promotional codes,discounts etc. fit the bill.
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Support Oliver View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Support Oliver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 August 2012 at 10:53am
Hi,

This has been the topic of much discussion over the last few years.

The bottom line is they can be created however they will not take into account shipping.

You may ask why? Currently we are integrating with both Amazon Payments and Products as well as other third party product listing programs such as eBay and eventually Google products.

If you use vouchers for any of these systems they only work on products and not shipping. We cannot have our system working a different way from these third party product systems we will be working with.

However excluding shipping I have created a YouTube guide on how you can make digital vouchers on RomanCart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hQsGJpg0VU&feature=plcp

Its a long tutorial but it works wonders.

Thanks

Oliver
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beng27 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote beng27 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 November 2012 at 8:40pm
Actually this is not true. If I have an Amazon voucher, I do not have to give my credit card details to pay separately for shipping. We've had this discussion before!!

We have had endless different explanations for this over the years, mostly boiling down to 'to be honest, here at RC we dont think vouchers should cover shipping'.

So sorry for my scepticism - can you explain please _exactly_ why would it not work with your Amazon integration? At the end of the day you have to bill the customer for £X including shipping.

I'm really sorry but I just dont see why can this not come from the voucher value? Why do you still insist that instead we have to bill the customer for X-£2.95 shipping, and then charge their card for 2.95 for the shipping.    It's just crazy.
The Best Vegetables for the Kitchen Garden
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Support Oliver View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Support Oliver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 November 2012 at 10:47am
Hi,

We will of course continue to investigate this. It actually comes down to the way API's (Application Programming Interfaces)for ALL integrated services communicate with RomanCart. (Including Payment Gateways)

As RomanCart uses a multitude of API's for different aspects of the cart they all need to work together.

In short, I am sure it would be quite possible for it to work with some of the current API's. However as a hosted system we cannot have it working for one and not the other, it has to be all or nothing.

Kind Regards

RomanCart Support Team

Edited by Support Oliver - 14 November 2012 at 11:17am
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goodgoth View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote goodgoth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 2:18pm
Other hosted services such as volusion work the correct way- i.e gift vouchers work against shipping, they also work with all the other payment methods; i.e amazon, paypal. So how do they do it?
This is a SERIOUS downside to romancart I believe you MUST address.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Support Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 2:35pm
Hi,

Firstly to clarify - currently we do not have any gift voucher functionality at all.

We have promotional codes and coupons which are something completely different as they allow you to give a discount on product values.

Gift vouchers are essentially a form of digital money.
You give someone a gift voucher worth 10, they spend 5 on an order and the voucher still has 5 left on it to use next time.
Or - they spend 10 on an order and pay the rest of the order using their card/paypal etc.

With some payment methods - notably Amazon and Google Checkout - we have to send them the contents of the basket and they calculate the total to charge to the customer. Therefore if the customer has already paid some of the total those payment methods would still charge the full amount. We would need to take a look again at this to see how those companies deal with this.

However it would be much easier to implement this with all the other payment methods i.e. those which we simply send a total to.
As my colleague above has stated we really need to get it working for all payment gateways, not just some of them.

Please let me know if we are all in agreement with this and are talking about the same thing. It is something which would be good to add.

Many Thanks
Support
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote beng27 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 9:17pm
We are almost, but not quite, talking about the same thing, but I really appreciate your engagement on this. Please bear with me as I try to explain why it isn't as complicated as you might think to do this. Thanks! :-)

The simplest model for gift vouchers requires very little change from current coupons:

First, imagine a customer orders a gift voucher from the merchant and pays the merchant £10
- Merchant generates a 1-time gift coupon code - just like is already done for coupons on RC - value £10.
- And sends the code to the customer.

Later - A customer fills cart with goods and checks out.
- at checkout they enter the coupon code (just like done currently)
- coupon value is deducted from "Total + Shipping"       [rather than from "Total" as at present]
- remaining payment, if any needed, taken from card (just like done currently)
-merchant dispatches goods.

Partially used gift coupons? Actually really easy.
- If order cost was < coupon value, it is up to the merchant to either generate new coupon code for remainder, or not - depending on their in house policy.
-Some merchants might say - whatever you don't spend from a gift coupon dissapears, other merchants might say ' we always send the change as another gift coupon code.
- But this is up to the merchant, and not a problem for RC to worry about.


Note that at no point does RC have to track value of coupons as 'money' or outstanding residual values.

The ONLY change this needs to work is for RC to enable a new class of coupon codes, called Gift Coupon Codes, that are applied to the "TOTAL+SHIPPING" rather than to the "TOTAL before shipping".

Examples:

Goods : £8
Shipping: £3
- Gift Coupon (£10)
_______________
Total to Pay £1      <paid by whatever RC methods enabled, just as always>


Or . . . .

Goods : £5
Shipping: £3
- Gift Coupon (£10)
_______________
Total to Pay £0.00      <customer loses £2, unless merchant chooses to send them new £2 coupon>

If you could spare a tiny bit more programming, it would be nice in this case to flash up a warning that they're not using up all of their coupon and £2 of it will be wasted (unless the merchant has ticked a settings box saying they will issue new coupons as change.) But not vital.

Summary
My point is that this would do pretty much all of what anyone wants from a basic gift-coupon system, with very little work for RC, and no extra storage or processing overhead.

You already have all the infrastructure in place with the current coupon system. All we need is a new coupon class that applies to TOTAL+SHIPPING. We can handle the rest ourselves.

Where the payment comes from -SagePay, Amazon, Google, PayPal or even Polish Zloty in the post - doesn't have any effect on the coupon system outlined above. Either they still owe some money after applying the coupon, or they don't. If they owe, they can pay by however the cart is configured, just as always.


thanks for sticking with this.

Ben


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beng27 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote beng27 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 9:24pm
And just a quick reminder of what the current coupon system does, you will see why we find it frustrating:

Goods : £8
- Coupon (£10)
_______________
subtotal: £0       < customer loses unused £2 of coupon>

+ Shipping: £3

_______________
Total to Pay £3      <paid by whatever RC methods enabled>



It would be such a small change to apply the coupon AFTER shipping!
The Best Vegetables for the Kitchen Garden
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goodgoth View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote goodgoth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 10:12pm
yeah. What he said ^    
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Support Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 November 2012 at 10:23pm
Hi,

Things that make it not quite so easy are:
1.(As previous post) Amazon and Google Checkout - as you send the basket contents not the final total. They calculate the amount to pay themselves. As far as I am aware they do not have the ability for a post shipping promotional code discount. (There may be though - but we would need to rewrite the integrations to include this if there is).

2. Tax. If the customer buys 5 products. tax rates on the product might be 10%,11%,8%,5%,20% for example (extreme I know but possible). Shipping is taxed separately too e.g. 10%
If you take off the tax after shipping then the tax on the shipping would also need to be reduced proportionately. Or does it? Maybe in some countries but not in others - depending on their tax rules. It gets very complicated.

3. RomanCart is all about automation. If you had 100 orders a day you would not want to have to manually locate all those which had a gift voucher and issue new ones for any remaining credit. This would have to be automated (and optional for smaller merchants perhaps).

We could easily ignore all this and make promo codes optionally take effect after shipping and ignore tax and other implications. This might work well for some. However we have a lot of merchants all using the cart in different ways. We would end up having to re-write it properly as soon as it was widely used which not be great for anyone.

As with all new features it is really important to iron out exactly what the requirement is and the best way to implement it before actual coding. (Which is what this discussion is for).

Many Thanks
Support
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