Gift Certificate Help Please

[finlander]

One thing,

If she initially purchased the GV AND the merchandise, at the same time, then of course the GV would not have been available right then for her to spend on the merchandise, because you have to RELEASE the GV to her after you make sure you are going to get paid. So, in that case, of course she had to pay for the merchandise straight away, but she now should have $12 sitting in her GV balance, and, if she insists on using the $12 for that particular merchandise, then you and she can still take care of it with the steps above. It does seem pretty crazy that someone would spend, say, $12 on a GV at the exact same time as spending $12 on merchandise, and then want to apply the $12 of GV funds to cover the merchandise at that exact same time. That seems wacko to me..

[finlander]

Hi,

I get it ...

To clarify, the place on page 2 of checkout, to put the amount of GV funds to apply to the order, will only appear to her, because only she has GV money sitting in a GV balance. That 'apply GV money' box is not seen by anyone else, so you can't see it when you test page 2 yourself, unless of course you personally have a GV balance. See attached image.

So, you could follow the solution above with swapping money from you to her in exchange for her GV money from her to you, or she could buy more stuff from you and spend the GV money then. :)

[CaroleAs]

Ohhhhhhhh.... ok. (wish those info were accompanied with screenshots in the tutorial section!)
Sending that info to the customer now.

However, i guess i will be out $12 now, since i cannot remove it from her, after re-issueing one for her friend (she had given me her email address). Oh well, lesson learned!

Lucky for me, GV are not frequent!

[finlander]

yeah, you can't yank it out of her hands, so to speak, but if you simply 'gave' $12 to her friend because the original shopper failed to do something obvious on page 2, then you could ask original shopper to e-mail her GV balance to you via GV Send feature. Then, it will be as though the original shopper gifted that 12 bucks to the friend, and everyone would be square money-wise.

[CaroleAs]

Now, customer just used that GV (with my suggestion so her level of frustration will go down!) so that is solved.

Next time CustomerA buys a GV for FriendB, how should i handle it so she gets a code to email a friend as i surely did something wrong here. Do i release it just like that? Or should i send more explicit instructions on how CustomerA should send the "money" to FriendB?

(it is kind of obscure!)

[finlander]

it's easier than that. If shopper A buys a GV, then uses the GV Send feature to send it to a friend B, the friend B will get the redeem code when B gets the e-mail about being the recipient of a wonderful gift cert. You don't have to do anything. B will then go to your store and redeem the GV by using the code, then B will have a GV balance. The only hitch is if B does the redeeming on page 2 of checkout. The next page will be page 3, and no GV funds are automatically applied (since a shopper may or may not want to use GV funds when redeeming GV certs), so if that happens, friend B, while sitting on page 3, would have to have the wherewithal to return to page 2 to enter the amount to apply. This is a common problem with landing someone on page 3 after redemption occurs on page 2. The Zen team may be looking at a better way of letting the page 3 customer know to go back to page 2, or you could code in a short note at the top of page 3 "if you want to spend GV funds you just redeemed, then go back to page 2" or something like that.

[CaroleAs]

it's easier than that. If shopper A buys a GV, then uses the GV Send feature to send it to a friend B, the friend B will get the redeem code when B gets the e-mail about being the recipient of a wonderful gift cert.

Do you mean i should not have to "release" anything or is that AFTER i release it?
(i think i will definitely email detailed instructions to the purchaser next time!)

[finlander]

yes, you will still have to release to shopper A buyer, of course, I skipped that part because I thought we had covered that ground. :)

You just won't have to do anything about friend B .. B will get the redeem code and should be able to handle her shopping from there. But as I mentioned, there is room for B to make errors, just like your shopper did tonight.

It's really a pretty good system, when the shopper pays attention to what is happening.

(you should take that text off your page about a buyer needing to e-mail the GV funds to herself if she wants to use them herself; that is not true -- she can use them straight away after you release, i.e., after you get paid.)

[CaroleAs]

when the shopper pays attention to what is happening.

Yeah! LOL

Thanks for all the help.

[finlander]

You're welcome, glad to help.