Bulk Order Rules

[cimo]

ok bulk orders has brought big advantages  ;D to the community but also big troubles  >:( .I take the responsibility to talk for all the community and say "No more troubles, no more bad feelings in the community", there is nothing personal against or pro any specific user, just the wish to keep on with the bulk orders in a proper way.

Now, let s forget about the past and try to figure out what we can do.

Some kind of rules have to be written down and become a reference for all the BO organizer and users.

Write in this thread what you think it is important for both sides.

I ll give a little start:

a)never ship before you have tested the items 1 by 1.

b)a BO organizer takes full responsibility for the whole deal, if you don t feel comfortable with it, DON T DO IT !

  no bulk order is way better than a bad bulk order

c)users take full responsibility to pay promptly and properly

d)BO organizers should give their telephone number to each of the BO user (is this maybe too much?)

let s see what comes out and try to compile a general list of rules

Mods feel free to take over this.

Simone

[smashtv]

Mods feel free to take over this.

No takeover needed, past and future participants should be making these rules.

How does "Guidelines for good bulk order procedure" sound?

Need some way to better describe the concept: "no issues about speed on any step of the effort unless the time frame for those steps is stated and negotiated in advance"

Not saying BOs should be slow etc., just that a clear timeframe is required else we have the loud impatience and accusation issues as seen here recently.

Once we get to goal with this I'll mash it into a list, get some help from everyone on wording, and sticky it to the bulkorder forum.  ;)

A well crafted paragraph that explains the reality of how much work a BO can be for people who have never done one would be a great preface.

Let's hear it guys, what went wrong, and what could have gone wrong but did not?

Best

Smash

[bugfight]

I'll just make a few quick points for now.

I think it would be better to require full disclosure up front of certain things, rather than try to define the form of every order.  for example:

  - payment methods accepted/required/preferred

  - any testing that will be done prior to shipping

  - time frame for each stage (ok smash, this can be 6months or whatever, but some idea should be given)

Additionally communication must be kept current, any delays promptly explained, etc.  Using some post you consider rude to excuse out of this is unacceptable

Maximum liability of the organizer should be a refund of payment on return of items.  If the organizer is held liable for shipping, then insurance would have to be required as well as full customs reporting and like such as...

I think the phone number requirement is too much.  Maybe each organizer could register contact info with a moderator??

[DrBunsen]

a)never ship before you have tested the items 1 by 1.

That's not going to be practical in a lot of cases (Surface mount ICs?).  I agree that testing/not testing should be stated beforehand, and if not testing, what the rules are for returns - including shipping.  Then you know what your risk is up front, and can make a big grownup decision whether the saving is worth it to you. 

That said, big ups to the folks who did test hundreds of components in recent bulks.

[Screaming_Rabbit]

I did one BO so far (Motorfaders). I have nothing to complain, everything went just perfect. It's just a matter how you organize it.

I think instead of setting up rules, it's better like SmashTV stated, to give a guide.

If I'm doing a bulk, I make the rules and not the forum. I'm the guy who has all the work and I'm doing a favour to the community and it goes my way. It's every individuals decision to go for it or leave it alone.

For example:

- If I want PayPal, I want PayPal and if somebody doesn't want to open an account, he just can't be part of the BO

- If I say I'm testing the parts because they're e.g used, I do it. If I order new parts, I won't test them but I would

  take them back and look for replacement from the factory/wholesaler

- If I ship the parts and a BO participant doesn't want insurance, it's his problem when the parts are arriving damaged

Sorry Cimo but my wive propably would kill me if I would hand out our phone number and some inpatiant guy is calling all day long while I'm at work and perhaps is even talking a strange language  ;D

For the creative part of this thread:

I recommend to set up a Website. http://home.tiscali.ch/screamingrabbit/Pages/UCAppsBulk_Order/BULK_Start.htm There are no spam-like replies from inpatiant guys disturbing the survey and you can publish what you know.

I always updated the pages so everybody can check if his mail was received and taken into account.

You can post pictures and pricelists in a much better organisation than like in a forum page.

Greets, Roger

[cimo]

I think instead of setting up rules, it's better like SmashTV stated, to give a guide.

fine and fair, we are here to learn

If I'm doing a bulk, I make the rules and not the forum. I'm the guy who has all the work and I'm doing a favour to the community and it goes my way. It's every individuals decision to go for it or leave it alone.

mmm, we have to take into account 2 factors: the "i want 25 of each color, now" syndrome and the  "i ve found a very good deal for 4mm washers, let s make a bulk order" trend

as i ve said before, my main concern is avoiding bad BOs

Sorry Cimo but my wive propably would kill me if I would hand out our phone number and some inpatiant guy is calling all day long while I'm at work and perhaps is even talking a strange language  Grin

i quote myself

(is this maybe too much?)

and Jimp

I think the phone number requirement is too much.  Maybe each organizer could register contact info with a moderator??

btw greetings to Ms ScreamingRabbit

For the creative part of this thread:

I recommend to set up a Website. http://home.tiscali.ch/screamingrabbit/Pages/UCAppsBulk_Order/BULK_Start.htm There are no spam-like replies from inpatiant guys disturbing the survey and you can publish what you know.

I always updated the pages so everybody can check if his mail was received and taken into account.

You can post pictures and pricelists in a much better organisation than like in a forum page.

good idea, but not everybody is able/has the time/wish/capacity to setup a website, you see? i ve visited your link and i was almost there to order something, 25 of each color!  ;D

Quote from: cimo on Yesterday at 18:32

a)never ship before you have tested the items 1 by 1.

That's not going to be practical in a lot of cases (Surface mount ICs?).  I agree that testing/not testing should be stated beforehand, and if not testing, what the rules are for returns - including shipping.  Then you know what your risk is up front, and can make a big grownup decision whether the saving is worth it to you.

i would personally insist on this point.Ok let s not make any rule but let s try to keep BOs at the same standards as uCapps itself.There is a difference between money saving and a lottery.

That said, big ups to the folks who did test hundreds of components in recent bulks.

UPS UPS UPS

How does "Guidelines for good bulk order procedure" sound?

it sounds like the new title of this thread

Need some way to better describe the concept: "no issues about speed on any step of the effort unless the time frame for those steps is stated and negotiated in advance"

English please!  :P

speak up!

simone

[cimo]

.. after phineus experience :

x) Paypal may close your account if all this summing money smells bad to them.. contact Paypal first? /use another way to gather the money?

..phineus wanna add something?

[Twin-X]

.. after phineus experience :

x) Paypal may close your account if all this summing money smells bad to them.. contact Paypal first? /use another way to gather the money?

..phineus wanna add something?

Or contact a good paypaller like me, money to me first when it's in send to reciever.

I could act a s a middle man. Paypal won't close my account as i am not new to them.

[cimo]

hi

wouldn t this mean another xtra 4%

[Twin-X]

hi

wouldn t this mean another xtra 4%

Yes :). but hey if you do not trust someone ;)

[Wilba]

A new PayPal account that receives money might attract more attention from PayPal but a long-standing account is in no way safe from being frozen... it can and does happen to eBay Power Sellers and trustworthy merchants. In that respect, a PayPal account that's been used for years to buy stuff from eBay etc. is probably just as safe to use as one like mine that's received over $25,000.

Please remember that PayPal decides to freeze accounts to steal their money, so any account with money is a target.

[phineus]

I now realize I could have potentially avoided the problem with PayPal limiting my account in a few ways:

a) by upgrading to a Business account before doing the bulk order.  The limits are higher and it doesn't seem as suspicious if you suddenly start getting many payments.  It may also be possible to increase your limits with a Personal account but I didn't explore this.

b) by using the PayPal "print shipping label" system.  I bypassed this because there were various international shipments and I wanted to go to the Post Office and talk to "my guy" and find out the best way to ship to each country - what forms I would need, etc, so I just did everything there.  What PayPal saw was that I had accepted a whole series of payments from other countries, but then never generated any mailing labels or tracking #'s within the system - so maybe I was up to something fishy, hence the red flag.  (I think also if I had manually entered the shipping information after the fact it still would have helped.)

Basically, if I had just done everything through the PayPal system the whole audit trail would have been there for them to check out and they wouldn't have needed proof of anything.

[phineus]

a PayPal account that's been used for years to buy stuff from eBay etc. is probably just as safe to use as one like mine

I have used my personal PP account for 8 years to buy and sell stuff on eBay and never had a problem of any kind until this bulk order, so I don't think that's necessarily true.

[cimo]

Quote from: Wilba on Today at 01:25

a PayPal account that's been used for years to buy stuff from eBay etc. is probably just as safe to use as one like mine

I have used my personal PP account for 8 years to buy and sell stuff on eBay and never had a problem of any kind until this bulk order, so I don't think that's necessarily true.

eBay owns paypal so no surprise they won t bother ebayers

anyway, it is clear to me (to anybody else?) that paypal policy or "violacy" can be a source for problems, let s take this into account

[seppoman]

eBay owns paypal so no surprise they won t bother ebayers

just google "paypal freeze" and you'll see they absolutely do bother ebayers. there are a lot of forums and pages describing paypal's actions. Here in Germany, in the last year several magazine reports told stories of paypal destroying the businesses of ebay power sellers for reasons they wouldn't even explain to the victims etc.

some links:

http://www.screw-paypal.com/resources/paypal_magic/limited_accounts.html

http://www.paypalwarning.com/

S

[cimo]

mm ok ok

good to know this was completely unknown to me

what other method we have to gather money? possibly something that you guys have tried already, i think we all agree we don t want to support paypal afterall.

simone

[Wilba]

The rule should be, treat PayPal with caution.

Let's consider a typical bulk order. The bulk orderer collects money from everyone prior to buying the parts. If the PayPal account is frozen before the bulk orderer withdraws that into their bank account, then it should in theory be possible to sort it out with PayPal, or if PayPal is being nasty, at least refund everyone's payments and cancel the bulk order completely. A bulk orderer with a frozen account should not be expected to fund the bulk order themselves and ship parts to people. If PayPal is trying to prevent fraud (their apparent reason for freezing accounts), then they should have no problem with fully refunding all the payments for the bulk order.

After a bulk orderer withdraws the money to their bank account, the only risk to the bulk orderer is if a person participating in the bulk order decides to complain to PayPal and get a refund on their payment, which is not likely to happen amongst MIDIbox people, and even if this does happen, the bulk orderer is only risking the amount the complaining person paid, so PayPal might take that amount out of a linked credit card or bank account, and the bulk orderer could dispute this or take action with their bank to reverse this. Perhaps this can be totally avoided by putting no specific information about what the payments are for, i.e. sending no PayPal invoices and just accepting payments from people. If PayPal has no information that goods are supposed to be sent, then a person cannot complain that they never arrived. All payments could therefore be considered (from PayPal's point of view) as non-refundable donations and no exchange of goods is taking place.

For people like me, who buy stuff with their own cash first and then accept payments via PayPal, there's a window of high-risk, where goods are shipped but the money hasn't been withdrawn into a bank account yet. So from now on, during any future "big sales" I have, I will withdraw amounts to my bank account weekly and only ship those orders that I have received "real cash" for... so any PayPal balance that might be frozen isn't technically "real cash" yet and can be refunded without me taking a loss. It's sort of like running a typical bulk order on a weekly basis, and I sort of "bulk buy" the parts from my own stock with "real cash" ;D

I've learned from phineus' experience and will NEVER leave thousands of dollars in my PayPal account anymore, especially payments for orders that I've already shipped!!! I must have been crazy!!!  :-[

As soon as I can use something better, like Google Checkout, I will stop using PayPal immediately, until that day, I will just use PayPal with caution and try not to worry about disaster scenarios.

[cimo]

I must have been crazy!!!

for many other reasons as well  :P

[dj3nk]

... omg ...

didn't know that pp is doing such things

good to know

[smashtv]

... omg ...

didn't know that pp is doing such things

good to know

This is actually pretty rare.....You typically have to either do something shifty or send/accept money from someone doing something shifty to get your account suspended.  You need to realize that real banks suspend accounts the same way and for the same reasons.

You have very few (but very loud) people talking about how paypal screwed them, versus many millions of happy account holders?  How many of these stories can be verified?  Where are the lawsuits?

Don't believe everything you read, a lot of these people forgot to tell the rest of the story - where they got their account and money back, and that the reason for the suspension was covered in the service agreement.....Else we would be seeing PayPal all over the news and tons of lawsuits.

The rule should be treat every transaction/financial service provider with caution, like it or not PayPal is the best when it comes to "works as expected".

Best regards

SmashTV

[mc4]

For people like me, who buy stuff with their own cash first and then accept payments via PayPal, there's a window of high-risk, where goods are shipped but the money hasn't been withdrawn into a bank account yet. So from now on, during any future "big sales" I have, I will withdraw amounts to my bank account weekly and only ship those orders that I have received "real cash" for... so any PayPal balance that might be frozen isn't technically "real cash" yet and can be refunded without me taking a loss. ..

:( This kind of frightens me. I'm currently doing the 2nd encoder run and hope all is working smooth.

Frank

[bugfight]

...

Don't believe everything you read, a lot of these people forgot to tell the rest of the story -

...

i wondered about this, since i've always had good experiences with paypal.

also paypal is not popular with the banking industry, who are not the most

scrupulous of folks....

[Wilba]

:( This kind of frightens me. I'm currently doing the 2nd encoder run and hope all is working smooth.

Frank

Like I said, if you're running a bulk order it should be no problem, you either will get all the cash from people before you buy parts or you won't (and in theory everyone gets their payment returned).

The people who are most often totally screwed are eBay sellers who still need their PayPal account to continue doing business... buyers are still sending payments expecting goods and the seller can't get the money out of their account. This scenario doesn't happen for bulk orders so it should be fine.

[sineSurfer]

About payPal, I know both sides:

for me, everything has been good, receiving cash and e-checks, sending money with paypal or credit card funds... no problems at all(I do have a real bank account on their database, and all the data they request)

on the other side, my boss's paypal account got blocked with something like 2200 US dollars, money from works with some design agency on the States that we used to pay for software whenever possible until paypal decided to block the account and asked my boss to add a personal bank account, he refused to do that and now that money is pretty much stuck in there, he need to call by phone to have it unblocked but as he don't need that money he will not move a thing, go figure!.

So, in the end the safest thing to do is to play by their rules.

btw. anyone knows how to unblock that account on his behalf? I got his permission to spend the money if I can take it, for real ;D

[ganchan]

i would share my opinion with all you about paypal. answer what do you think about:

paypal take 3.4% + €0.35 on incoming payment. if you send me your money (sub TOT) plus 3.4%, they take the % over this sum, and 3.4% of this sum it's more than 3.4% of the original money (sub TOT) that I need for buying.

example at 3.4%:

[table]

    [tr]

      [td]sub TOT[/td]

      [td]30.00[/td]

      [td]I will pay this for your items.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]3.4%[/td]

      [td]1.02[/td]

      [td]I would add this for paypal fee.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]TOT[/td]

      [td]31.02[/td]

      [td]I recive this from you trought paypal.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]3.4%[/td]

      [td]1.05[/td]

      [td]paypal take 1.05 from 31.02 and not 1.02. so I've just 29.27 from you.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]GN TOT[/td]

      [td]29.97[/td]

      [td][/td]

    [/tr]

[/table]

to prevent this i will add 3.6%, see below:

[table]

    [tr]

      [td]sub TOT[/td]

      [td]30.00[/td]

      [td]I will pay this for your items.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]3.6%[/td]

      [td]1.08[/td]

      [td]I would add this for paypal fee.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]TOT[/td]

      [td]31.08[/td]

      [td]I recive this from you trought paypal.[/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]3.4%[/td]

      [td]1.06[/td]

      [td]paypal take 1.06 on 31.08, than i have 30.02![/td]

    [/tr]

    [tr]

      [td]GN TOT[/td]

      [td]30.02[/td]

      [td][/td]

    [/tr]

[/table]