Store Credit

Actually, we have sold hundreds of Apparel Add-on licenses and this feature has virtually never come up (in fact, I don't believe it's even in our internal development Wish List).

That said, it is certainly a good idea and we will take it into account for future versions.

One way around the problem is to use the Reward Points system as "Store Credits":

- Name "Reward Points" something like "Store Credits"
- Customers would NOT accrue Store Credits while purchasing (i.e. assign 0 "Store Credits" to ALL products)
- Customers would be given Store Credits only manually, by the store administrator, via the Edit Customer page in the Control Panel.
- Customers with a positive Store Credit balance will be able to use the credit during checkout.
- The Conversion Rate would be 100% (1 Store Credit = $1).

We hope this helps!

Edited by earlyimp - 11-May-2010 at 6:44pm

We do use "Reward Points" as a referral points and points for made purchases. That said we do not have any options...

Reward Points. That is a interesting and creative solution to this.

What do you think, Alex?

We had looked into building an actual store credit system, but with the OPC in v4 it would be very complex to weave this in -- esp. given that a customer may need/want to only use a portion of that available credit on a given order.

Seems to me that reward points would essentially take care of this.

As for Alex's comment that "every shopping cart priced at $199 and up has [store credit]", I have never seen a shopping cart that ships with such a feature.

Edited by Sean@WMS - 11-May-2010 at 8:04pm

I'm just giving out my thoughts on this so please don't take it bad.  Example I go to Macys buy something and don't like.  I bring it back and actually expect a refund on my credit card.  I would be really ticked off if they tell me sorry but here is a store credit instead.  Especially if I very seldom shop there or if it is a long drive away.  Most stores will refund your credit card and that is the end of it.  By granting store credit you are keeping money you have not really earned and how do you deal with it if a customer doesn't come back for the next 5 years?  Do you contact them and send them a check?  As a retailer I rather close the book on the return and move on.  That being said we only refund the amount of the merchandise, not the shipping or return shipping.  We also charge a restocking fee, if the item is not returned in original condition including packaging material.  Food items are excluded from returns.  You are saying you are loosing money on returns.  Well its not your money when an items gets returned.  Sorry to say that, but again this is my thought on it.  I think you may alienate some customers by just giving them store credit.  I've purchased clothing/shoes over the Internet (my husbands shoe size is 13EEE) and have always received a refund on items that did not fit, less the shipping of course.  I like the idea of store credit, but again the only scenario I can see for our store is a returned gift order by the person who received the gift.  This may explain why many PC users have not asked for a store credit feature in this forum.  I like to have the option, but I can easily live without it.  Anyway this was my extended thought on this idea.

We actually normally issue refunds on our broken or damaged live plants but we occasionally need to issue a store credit.  We did a little fix by adding a note to the customer account which is removed after they order again.  I love the idea of using the Rewards program for this as we don't use it at all at this point.  It will be easy to adapt to our uses.  Thanks EI !