Amazon change to “charge on ship”
by Chris Dawson
Amazon are enabling “charge when shipped” for third party sellers on the site. Rather than charging a buyers credit card when the order is placed, in the future they’ll only be charged when the goods are despatched by the seller.
Amazon told sellers “Charge When Ship follows the current industry standard for processing buyer payments and will also help keep buyers informed about the status of their deliveries. All new orders you receive must be processed using Charge When Ship.”
Sellers on Amazon need to be aware that they are required to confirm despatch of each order. If sellers don’t begin to confirm their shipments, Amazon are likely to temporarily suspend their listings to prevent customers from receiving orders they have not been charged for.
Amazon expects sellers to despatch within 2 days of order confirmation. Any orders which are not confirmed as despatched within 30 days will be canceled without the customer ever having been charged.
8 Responses on "Amazon change to “charge on ship”"
Related Posts:
- Amazon fix for eBay DSRs on international shipping
- It’s an EasySell on Amazon for casual sellers
- Amazon UK: spend a fiver, get free delivery
- Amazon open Europe Marketplaces Accounts
- Expansion of ship to locations ready for launch
Recent Posts
- Brightpearl online/offline multi-channel retail solution
- 100 free listings for private sellers 11th-12th Feb
- eBay display NSE search results with no pricing
- HMRC campaign aimed at people who fail to make tax returns
- Royal Mail waive SmartStamp subscriptions as apology
Sounds like it makes sense to me. Another sensible move by Big River
The only problem will be – with customers whose credit cards are due to expire within 48 hours of order placement. I remember buying something from WhSmith online on a Friday afternoon – with my card due to expire on Sunday. They didn’t process the order until Monday- at which point the payment was rejected.
Therefore, expect to see more of these types of problems arising on Amazon.
The good thing, is that for private individual market place sellers who have gone on holiday / been admitted to hospital / died & are unable to fulfill their orders – buyers will not feel that they have been ripped off – as the order will show as ‘Unshipped’- and therefore explain the non-receipt.
Of course Amazon created this problem in the 1st place by automatically marking marketplace seales as ‘dispatched’ within a few hours of the order being placed.
It is a shame that Ebay shows absolutely no sign of of moving towards this type of system- in particular revamping ‘My Ebay’ to give buyers an ‘at a glance’ summary of whether an item has been dispatched (rather than relying on emails sent by sellers – which are hardly ever read by buyers, who compound their own problems by having invalid email addresses registered)
To be honest Mukesh if you read most credit card merchant agreements (including PayPal’s!!!) you’re not allowed to take the money until you actually ship the goods.
Also technically sellers who accept credit card payments via PayPal are constantly in breach of the user agreement (assuming they’ve signed up to the PayPal COMMERCIAL ENTITY USER AGREEMENT FOR CREDIT CARD PROCESSING SERVICES, which all sellers will have to agree to if they’re selling enough)
“Merchant agrees that it will not submit a transaction until Merchant: (i) obtains an authorisation, (ii) completes the transaction, and either: (iii) ships or provides goods, (iv) performs the purchased service, or (v) obtains the cardholder’s consent for a recurring transaction.”
That’s a direct quote but if someone pays me on a Friday evening their goods won’t ship until Monday, I’m not providing a service and it’s not a recurring transaction. Even worse I haven’t a clue if the buyer paid by credit card or if it was a balance funded payment so I don’t even know which or how many transactions are covered by that ruling!
I just live with at least being aware that I’m not only constantly breaking the agreement but that I have no choice but to break it because that’s how PayPal/eBay works!
One would hope that Amazon have allowed for this, though presumably they’ll be making an assumption that sellers stick within the two day shipping timeframe.
There are a few problems with this kind of payment processing, as previously mentioned. We use dispatch express to print postage labels etc, and mark as shipped once the label has been printed.
Will we get an IMMEDIATE notification (on screen) if when shipping the item within Amazon if the payment has failed, or as I suspect an email the following day telling us not to ship the order.
A reasonable ‘no problemo’ Amazon policy. Not a bother for us. And it’s a subtle low pressure means to insure all sellers will shipped out an order in a reasonable amount of time.
> #3 Chris Dawson on August 18th, 2009 5:52 pm
> Also technically sellers who accept credit card payments via PayPal
> are constantly in breach of the user agreement
Typical PayPal policy which is of course bun backwards from how the rest of real life retail works.
> Merchant agrees that it will not submit a transaction until Merchant:
> (iii) ships or provides goods
PayPal must idiotically think it’s the norm in the U.K. (or anywhere else) for the average store to hand over (“provide”) goods to a customer, and then request payment AFTER the goods have been loaded into the customer’s car.
Vrooom … screeeeech …
.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to steal???”
Alexander Mundy, It Takes A Thief
Firstly it’s not PayPal – it’s the merchant credit card agreement. Secondly it’s ships or provides the goods” is a process during which the card can be charged. No pay then simply don’t ship, but don’t charge today and ship next week is the point.
What is available and what often happens for hotel bookings etc is where funds are reserved on the card but not actually taken until the service is provided. That way a vendor can ensure they’ll get the funds without actually taking them at this moment in time.
> #7 Chris Dawson on August 19th, 2009 9:44 am
> Firstly it’s not PayPal
Firstly it is PayPal. Says it there ‘right on the box.’
> #3 Chris Dawson on August 18th, 2009 5:52 pm
“PayPal COMMERCIAL ENTITY USER AGREEMENT”
This is a PayPal policy, being said policy is on the PayPal site and written by PayPal. Or perhaps more accurately, it’s a badly done PayPal re-edit of a generic merchant account agreement. Our merchant account agreements differ from the above PayPal rewrite.
At this point the question is does a seller using PayPal’s services believe the PayPal ‘left hand’ (the policy your quoted), or the PayPal ‘right hand’?
PayPal User Agreement:
This User Agreement (“Agreement”) is a contract between you and PayPal and applies to your use of PayPal’s Services.
3.7 Merchant Processing Delay. When you send a payment to certain merchants, you are providing an Authorization to the merchant to process your payment and complete the transaction. The payment will be held as pending until the merchant processes your payment. Some merchants may delay processing your payment. In such an instance, your Authorization will remain valid for up to 30 Days.
4.4 Payment Review. …… If the payment is cleared, PayPal will provide notice to the seller to ship the item.
You know, pay first, ship after.
This does point out the simplicity of Amazon’s policy. To which eBay is attempting to implement.
.
Anyone in business should read The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Not necessarily practice it though.
Machiavellianism: “Machiavellian cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics or in advancing one’s career. The word derives from Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian statesman and political philosopher, whose best-known work The Prince (1532) advises rulers that the acquisition and effective use of power may necessitate unethical methods.”
Oxford Dictionary