Comments on: Is an Account needed when checking out in osCommerce

By: Isa

Isa — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:03:04 +0000

Trying to see it from the customer's viewpoint, I assume someone who refuses to enter their details online supposedly doesn't want their details stored in any database, so I wonder how ethical it is to store their details anyway.
I'm just trying to take into account everybody's wishes (mine as the seller and the customer's) and see what the best solution is for all parties involved. The whole thing proves to be more complicated than I had anticipated .

By: enigma1

enigma1 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:40:54 +0000

Yes obviously at some point they need to provide the street address, name etc details. But that's the easy part if they just fax the info or call you up.

The whole idea behind it is to have a mechanism of binding order details to a potential customer for later use along with the various totals. Since the order will be recorded in the database it will have an identifier therefore you could ask the customer to provide it as a reference, when they send you the fax or snail-mail with the check.

When recorded, the order itself could be set with a default customer name like "new customer" and the order status to something like "awaiting info" so you it's a special type of order. The address street details and names will be missing initially, but with an order editor you could set them up once you get the customer details (if that is required).

By: Isa

Isa — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:49:33 +0000

I see, that takes care of calculating a shipping cost, but then I still need to get hold of their shipping address so they are still gonna have to contact me in another way, unless I'm missing something.
I only use flat rate shipping.
So I'm thinking if they have a printable page that pops up, can that page be made to already contain shipping (provided they can enter a destination country before that stage), or, could that page contain a drop down or similar so they select shipping themselves?
Still very unsure how best to tackle this problem.

By: enigma1

enigma1 — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:55:28 +0000

You can calculate the shipping because the customer will select the country and state and perhaps enter a zipcode. Almost all carriers need just that, and you get accurate real-time shipping quotes. If you don't use an external carrier then it's even easier as you know the shipping cost from the store's dependencies (static, table-driven etc).

By: Isa

Isa — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:35:54 +0000

You're right, I hadn't considered the shipping problem. This is giving me a headache lol.
How can the shop estimate a shipping cost if they won't enter any shipping address to start with?
I guess the only way to deal with it is they contact me with what product they want through phone/fax and I get back to them with shipping costs and total.