Tutorial - coupons

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I've always been confused about how to give (and use!) store coupons or even gift cards.

Say, I put a unique coupon code on a business card (tracked in a word document or spreadsheet).  Now someone comes to the shop to redeem it.

What is the procedure?  Do they put it in their cart but NOT complete the payment?  Can you revise the price while it's in someone cart?

Should the coupon instruct them to contact me FIRST so that I can put the specially priced item of their choice in to a reserve listing?

Please take me through a step by step including both the buyer's and the seller's steps.

(I am considering doing "free shipping" coupons.)
THANKS!

[Northern Girl Jewelry]

I don't think icraft has the ability to take coupons integrated into the check-out system, so I think you have two main options.  One is to refund the buyer through paypal after they have paid you.  With this option, you would have the customer put the coupon code in the notes to seller.  This would allow the buyer to do his/her entire transaction when he/she wants to, but would have to wait for the refund.

The second option is to have the buyer contact you first, and then you would do a revised listing for them with the correct price.  On icraft we have the option to create a reserved listing that isn't visible to everyone, but you could give the link to it to the buyer to go complete the transaction.  The disadvantage here is that someone who is making an impulse purchase might not want to wait to do the transaction.

I suppose there is a third option, which is for the buyer to check out with the items in his/her cart, tell you about the coupon in the notes to seller, not make a paypal payment at that time and wait for you to send a revised paypal invoice (you would generate that invoice directly in paypal, not here on icraft) and the buyer would pay once he/she receives your invoice.

Any of these options do require that you check your email frequently to be able to take the next step once you know about the coupon.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Thanks for the explanation.  I did make an invoice in Paypal before.

Is there a way to cancel the one on iCraft?  Won't the buyer be left with the original, unpaid invoice forever?

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Ensorcelled Minds,

You can cancel any order, however you will lose a record of that sale if you do so. Additionally, your customer won't be able to leave a feedback on that transaction.

However, there is an option to mark any order as "Paid", "Not Paid" or "Refunded" manually on the Order Details page. You might want to do that instead.

As for the coupons and gift certificates - we don't have a way for you to setup fully automated process that would apply a discount based on your unique offer. This is something we might build in the future. However, this one is a difficult peace to tackle, as there are numerous scenarios that we need to account for.

Right now you simply decide how you want to handle it. Jewelry Without Borders described a few scenarios that might work for you. Let us know if you have any specific questions and we’ll try to help as much as we can. Thanks!

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Thanks.  Jewellery Without Borders explained it well.  I didn't know about being able to manually mark a sale as paid, etc.  Thanks for the info!