Altering compulsory email input on login and sign-up

[SteveCollins]

I would like to take telephone orders and process them through my site. I have already installed the Master Password patch in order to login as any one of my customers. Now what I need to do is make it so that I can set a master email address (or find another way) so that i can bypass this when creating an account for those who do not have (or do not want to give their email address out. I am looking at doing this through the front end of the site, not admin.

To clarify what I am asking:

1. Customer places order over phone.
2. I start creating an account for them.
3. I get to the email address part and either place in some override code, or just simply leave this out.

Has anyone got any ideas?

[jammin320]

Quick question to clarify, if you are creating an account for the customer, but you would like to over-ride the need for the customer's email address . . . what are you going to use for the customer's login name?

[SteveCollins]

I was hoping that i could use an master name such as 'admin' or the customer services reps name that would be used in conjuction with the master password so that an account could be set up in a way that only the name and address of the customer is important to the actual account and orders.

I would still need to process any orders in the same way as normal web orders, but by adding this feature, or something similar, i could process an order without having to have an offline database system that i would need to constantly update in order to adjust product stock sold through the site.

I hope that this makes sense.

Thanks for your reply.

[jammin320]

I See . . .

What you are asking sounds doable, however the actuall coding of such a project is beyond my skill. An alternative solution would be to create a 'universal' login everytime someone called from their phone number or some such info.

If I were in your shoes and I needed to process large numbers of phone orders it would look somthing like this (no mods needed).

1) Cusomer calls and says they want to place an order.
2) I ask if they are a repeat customer.
3) I get their phone number from them
3a) If they are a repeat customer, I login as phonenumber AT user DOT com (or something)
3b) If they are new, I creat an account for them as phonenumber AT user DOT com - the trick is that each user is phonenumber at user.com
4) If they are new, enter their address info, if they are not, you have that on file already and you can gain points in good customer service. This will also allow you to maintain visibility on ordering habits of your client base.
5) Process and ship the order as usual.

Like I said, this isn't the solution you were looking for, but it may keep you up and running until someone spend some time in the code.

[SteveCollins]

Tried your suggestion. This is definitely an alternative that I can use.

Many thanks for your help.