I'm in the US and unfortunately I just got my refund letter today. The cost for my Pandora w/ shipping was $353.50, and then I had to pay another $10.60 for a foreign currency transaction fee, which I did not expect. I haven't gotten my refund yet, but I'm assuming I won't get that $10.60 back, and my cc may even take another chunk of money from the refund. So I was planning to reorder because I'm patient and I can wait for what's going to be a good product. But let's say I don't - I'm already out money unless they refund the exact amount including the foreign currency fee.
Now to my problem with the recent email I received.
(1) First and foremost, if you're going to sell an item internationally, you should be able to accept funds in different currencies, not say you'll accept funds and then convert them all to GBP. $10 isn't a big deal so I didn't complain before.
(2) The bank transfer option is not acceptable to me - Bank transfer may be free in the UK, but what about everyone else?? I've never heard of bic/swift or IBAN, but from what I've read, it's definitely not possible to do an IBAN transfer in the US. As for SWIFT, I have checking accounts with two banks, and one charges a $25 fee for SWIFT transfer and the other charges a $15 + % fee of domestic wire transfers, so I'm guessing international fees are going to be similar or more. So that's even *more* money that I have to shell out. That's not acceptable to me. I should have to pay no more when I re-order than I paid initially. Pushing bank transfers is especially bad practice considering that I've also read on here that several people are weary of the bank transfer because there's no security behind that. I would much prefer to pay with a credit card.
(3) I've read that there will be a % fee assessed for credit card orders. This is also not acceptable to me. I think the OpenPandora team should eat any additional cost of taking orders again. If that means they have to take a 3% hit on CC orders, than so be it. Yes, they couldn't control the fact that their bank decided to not accept the payments, but I'm a paying customer and I shouldn't have to jump through any more hoops or pay any more money for the product. That's just bad business practice.
So basically I think there needs to be a fair way of repayment to people who order the Pandora from all over the world, not just in the UK or even the EU. Because basically with the options I've been given, it means that no matter what, I'm going to have to pay even more money for the Pandora than I first budgeted, whereas someone in the UK won't.
Here are my suggestions:
- If they want to set up a US bank account and allow ACH transfers in US funds (which are free between most banks in the US), that might work for US, but not others. That also won't appease people who don't want to send bank transfers at all.
- Take a hit on the fees on the CC transactions and learn for the next batch. Don't pass additional fees on to your initial customers.
- Figure out a way to set up PayPal again. Take reorders through PayPal only when you're ready to ship, so it meets the under 20 days requirement. Eat the PayPal fees and learn for the next batch.
I would really like to re-order the Pandora, but not if it's gonna cost me even more money in fees. The intial price was a lot for me to come up with in the first place.
Now to my problem with the recent email I received.
(1) First and foremost, if you're going to sell an item internationally, you should be able to accept funds in different currencies, not say you'll accept funds and then convert them all to GBP. $10 isn't a big deal so I didn't complain before.
(2) The bank transfer option is not acceptable to me - Bank transfer may be free in the UK, but what about everyone else?? I've never heard of bic/swift or IBAN, but from what I've read, it's definitely not possible to do an IBAN transfer in the US. As for SWIFT, I have checking accounts with two banks, and one charges a $25 fee for SWIFT transfer and the other charges a $15 + % fee of domestic wire transfers, so I'm guessing international fees are going to be similar or more. So that's even *more* money that I have to shell out. That's not acceptable to me. I should have to pay no more when I re-order than I paid initially. Pushing bank transfers is especially bad practice considering that I've also read on here that several people are weary of the bank transfer because there's no security behind that. I would much prefer to pay with a credit card.
(3) I've read that there will be a % fee assessed for credit card orders. This is also not acceptable to me. I think the OpenPandora team should eat any additional cost of taking orders again. If that means they have to take a 3% hit on CC orders, than so be it. Yes, they couldn't control the fact that their bank decided to not accept the payments, but I'm a paying customer and I shouldn't have to jump through any more hoops or pay any more money for the product. That's just bad business practice.
So basically I think there needs to be a fair way of repayment to people who order the Pandora from all over the world, not just in the UK or even the EU. Because basically with the options I've been given, it means that no matter what, I'm going to have to pay even more money for the Pandora than I first budgeted, whereas someone in the UK won't.
Here are my suggestions:
- If they want to set up a US bank account and allow ACH transfers in US funds (which are free between most banks in the US), that might work for US, but not others. That also won't appease people who don't want to send bank transfers at all.
- Take a hit on the fees on the CC transactions and learn for the next batch. Don't pass additional fees on to your initial customers.
- Figure out a way to set up PayPal again. Take reorders through PayPal only when you're ready to ship, so it meets the under 20 days requirement. Eat the PayPal fees and learn for the next batch.
I would really like to re-order the Pandora, but not if it's gonna cost me even more money in fees. The intial price was a lot for me to come up with in the first place.
