http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/ User submitted comments to Practical Ecommerce's article entitled Protect Customers' Data Or Lose Your Business en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:53:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment9108 We have discussed the pre-order scenario before. The problem with this plan is that we give them 3 more weeks to back out of the purchase. As these are custom products, this can cause many problems. Even if we charge the usual 20% restocking fee, I don't yet have the credit card info to charge that fee! I know that giving your credit card number to someone isn't a contract to buy. But a lot of people feel that way. I think people are more likely to see the purchase all the way through having given the credit card info. I don't have any proof of this, but on the surface it seems that this method would increase lost orders. 3-4 weeks is a lot of time to shop around more.... Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:53:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment9108 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment8996 You might want to look into changing your process to something like a Bill Me Later plan just as you mentioned. Or even change your process to a "pre-order" scenario and have it automated to send the customer a link to fill out the information for payment 3 weeks later (to meet the requirements you mentioned above). that would give them the benefit of filling out the payment information only once and you the benefit of delaying receiving the payment to later. You could adjust the three week period to meet what you feel are most of your customers needs (4 weeks, 5 weeks, at a certain point in production, whatever you are comfortable with). You might need a programmer for it but you could likely find one to make the changes from a service lik guru.com where you can state a budget and vendors bid on the project. Although I don't take credit card information at all in my business, I've heard that Quick Books merchant services has functionality to help protect card information that you... Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:57:18 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment8996 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment8981 I would love to use a payment gateway. Unfortunately, I don't charge until I ship which could be 6 to 8+ weeks out (custom products). So currently I collect numbers and run the transaction on the terminal when the item ships (just like you mentioned in the article). Last I checked into payment gateways, 30 days was the max the would hold a transaction to be completed. That absolutely doesn't work for me. Maybe I am missing something in how this process works. If anyone knows of a gateway that would work for the above scenario, can they point me towards it. it seems like a simple service but I couldn't find any payment gateways that offered this service. I would love to have nothing to do with this credit card info. I hope someday some type of smart card swipe is included on computers so we (and the consumer) don't have to mess with all of this stuff. It annoys me that we have to deal with the poor security of the credit card payment system. Why am I responsible for... Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:47:24 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/#comment8981