We just batch processed club and are getting a number of people providing new shipping addresses for their order. Am I understanding that in order to update the address, we have to refund and recharge them? Even though its the same order and I don’t want to charge anything different? We have to pay fees on every transaction. So we get charged merchant fees 3 times for one order just to update a ship address?
It’s kind of gross, isn’t it? No matter how aggressively you try to persuade members to check and update their information before hand, this is just the nature of the beast.
Refund-and-recharge is the best practice because it needs to check compliance and tax rates, which vary by state and county. You could also update the shipping addresses at the ShipCompliant or Fulfillment level, however Vin65 tracking emails will still list the old address.
As for the redundant merchant fees, it’s sort of the cost of doing business.
We do what @EdFarmCollective suggests for address changes that are in the same area. For us, most of our address changes fall into this category and they are typically packages to be delivered to a work address or neighbors house. If they have moved out of the area and it will impact compliance and taxes, we will do the refund and create a new order.
We build about a week of time between when we charge and when we ship for this reason and hold the orders in ShipCompliant where we can make changes to addresses and delivery dates.
We have had a lot of customer service issues with always refunding and recharging. Much of this is how the banks schedule refunds v. charges. If you are refunding near a weekend or holiday, it can take upwards of a week to post the refund while the charge will sail right through.
Sorry I’m so late to this but if you are still having this issue, please make a feature request!!
The inability to change addresses post order creates a huge headache for me, personally, every club run. We run everything as a pick up club then the members that have not been picked up get switched to flip to shipX, charged the shipping fee and their orders shipped out about a week later. It never fails that a vast majority of members won’t update their shipping addresses until after the original run so I have to keep a spreadsheet with the updated addresses, manually sort all of the labels for the club and pull out the labels with the incorrect address for the members after the flip to shipX run, reconcile the shipping fee charge to make sure it hasn’t drastically changed for their new address, and create a new label with the correct info through the UPS platform. I won’t refund and recharge members mainly because it’s an inconvenience for them and some can get pretty nasty about the time it takes to get the refund.
I can see how it wouldn’t be such a big deal for wineries using ShipCompliant or Fulfillment, but for the rest of us it’s quite the process to fix. Please let me know if you have come up with a workaround.
I just finished my first club run where I refunded and recharged for all address charges, order changes, etc. I was pleasantly surprised; nobody complained! I had one or two people question it, but once I explained I had to make a new order, they were fine with it. I performed about 100 refunds and recharges in 10 days, and not one complaint.
I’m not saying your customers are the same as mine, but you might be surprised.
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I self fulfill and do not refund and re-charge. I create a shipping only order similar to the flip to ship and reference the old order # on the new order # and the new order # on the old order # for my reference. I have an item called address change. I charge $10.00 to change an address after Club processing. This information is provided to members as part of their “Thanks for joining” email and the email I send out 3 weeks prior to processing. With the new club processing emails that can include the club blob info I put it after this along with the 21 years or older reminder. I’ve done this for a year and generally have less than 10 members that request changes.
We had a pretty long thread on some of the changes that we would like to see happen to the club processing area. Our last system had an extra status and step to release club orders. Basically, once the club orders were created and charged, they were held in suspension in the system until they were released for fulfillment. This was very handy for making changes to shipping dates, address updates (local changes e.g., deliver to a neighbor or business v. I moved to a new state which still requires a cancel and new order), and being able to add items to club orders. We would build a few days in to try and catch most of the cleanup work and then send it along to fulfillment.
Did it recheck compliance and recalculate tax with every change?
I don’t recall any longer but I suspect they did not. We weren’t concerned because the changes that we processed this way were in the same taxing and compliance areas. If they contained changes to different cities or states, we handled those by voiding and creating new orders.
You could still technically do that in ShipCompliant right now if your fulfillment or in-house shipping doesn’t retrieve Club orders immediately.
Though I will add, your Vin65 tracking emails will still list the old information which confuses customers.
Agree. We do it that way now and yes it confuses our customers because their emails all contain the incorrect address. I would prefer to make the changes in the system that customers access. It is one reason I have not moved forward with the ShipCompliant noticing service. I like the concept but it is all contained in a system that our customers do not interact with and that our TR and customer service folks do not use.
We moved to Wine Direct last year and see this is a serious customer satisfaction issue. I am quite surprised this feature has not been fixed. We need the ability to change a shipping address after the order has been processed (but before it goes to shipping). Our previous system did this so it has to be possible. It’s hard to sell more wine when your customers get annoyed with being refunded and recharged for something they think seems so easy.
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Hi all, the same applies to POS, adminpanel, and website - customers do change their minds after the transaction and we need to be able to edit the shipping address. We are new to WD and by the looks of things not looking forward to club order processing.
The thing is, you CAN change them. My previous system let me do all kinds of things I shouldn’t do that would allow me to run afoul of compliance, accountability, good record keeping, etc pretty easily. But in this example - If I can’t tell you where your wine actually is by opening an order and looking at it, count me out.
We are all going to encounter issues like this - it’s part of running a club. If the customer’s choice is between their wine being knowingly sent to the wrong place vs. the customer needing to be okay with a refund/recharge - I think customers can be made to understand that you need to create a different order and this is what is going to happen. Hopefully they will also learn that it’s much better to play along and get it right the first time.
There will always be people who just don’t play along, but (as @EdFarmCollective said about transaction fees) this is the cost of doing business. I can echo @rmcguire’s anecdote that I do refund/recharge and even though I get the occasional inquiry I don’t really get pushback on this. Except that one particular time that was really, really rough.
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Can you re-add someone to the batch? I’ve just processed the club orders and have a request for an address change to another state. I have to refund and re-ring. Does anyone know if you can re-add them to the batch so I can run it as a club order? The original order was cancelled. We have a work around order type of club, non-batch, but I would rather not have to use that. Thanks!
You can, in a way. I have accomplished this by adding a second club membership (duplicating all club membership details exactly) to the customer’s account, and then deleting the original one. Club processing will treat it as “new” and will let you add the customer’s “new” membership to the batch.
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The inability to easily update a shipping address causes a special kind of nightmare with the address changes caused by COVID-19 lockdowns.
Want to see this implemented? Our best bet is to vote on the issue on Wine Direct Ideas. It’s currently the top requested feature by a factor of two.