Recommended reports
How We Shop in 2010: Habits and Motivations of Consumers
How We Shop in 2010: Habits and Motivations of Consumers is split into two separate documents for the US and UK, examining e-commerce consumer behavior in both countries. Both reports focus on how consumers interact with e-commerce brands, conduct product research and the different factors in the buying decision-making process.
Director at Icreon UK
30 October 2007 16:27pm
We have some ecommerce clients who take payment as soon as the user submits their credit card details via the payment gateway.
Some of them have warehouses with goods ready to ship, but in some cases they may need to wait for delivery.
Alternatively goods may be shipped directly from the supplier and there is no link from supplier systems to indicate if goods are currently in stock, ready for dispatch or dispatched.
What exactly is the legistlation on when payment can be taken in the above scenarios?
rgds
Adley
Director at Watson Hall Ltd
05 November 2007 11:43am
In the first instance, if this is business-to-consumer, you may want to review the distance selling regulations. The Office of Fair Trading has a good (48 page PDF) guide at:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf
This mentions what you need to do if you take payment in advance.
You should also consider how you protect card holder data, since I infer that you may be doing refunds as well.
Regards
Colin Watson
Technical Director
Watson Hall Ltd Website security
http://www.watsonhall.com
Director at Icreon UK
10 December 2007 06:11am
Thanks Colin. That doc is handy from source of info although it doesnt say anything about at what stage its okay to take the money.
Talking to various people im starting to think that its an urban myth that you need to have the goods in stock and earmarked for that user before taking payment. I know its the requirement in the staes that this needs to be done but i havent found anything that says this is the case in the UK.
Someone told me that this will be a new EU requirement - but not yet.
cheers
adley