Non-uk Refunds And Repayments Issues


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smanky

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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.
 
I suggest that you send the shop you preordered a mail and try to find a solution you can live with. I don't think that the forum members are able to find a solution for you. It will just end in another open-ended bitchfest. It's a very unpleasant situation, but there is no spirit of mischief.

My 2 Cents.
 
I think there should be an fair solution for everyone, not just me.

mali said:
I suggest that you send the shop you preordered a mail and try to find a solution you can live with. I don't think that the forum members are able to find a solution for you. It will just end in another open-ended bitchfest. It's a very unpleasant situation, but there is no spirit of mischief.

My 2 Cents.
 
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A 3% charge for you amounts to about 10 bucks. Really not that much money. A 3% loss for them (again) amounts to in the vicinity of (another) $40k. Much more than the nominal amount they're asking you to pay. Don't just look at this from your perspective. On top of that, they're "eating" all of the costs of the RAM/NAND upgrades - something which I'm sure is quite expensive. Those chips weren't on the market before they added them to the Pandora; I'm sure they're paying a premium for such new technology.
 
They need to provide better repayment options. I was just giving suggestions. All CC's charge some sort of fee, that's how they make their money. I'm sure their CC processor charged a fee before that wasn't passed on to us. And now if they're talking about passing the fee onto us, that's not right.

I guess I'm the only one who is disappointed with this process. It should be set up so it's just as easy if not easier than the first time around, and we shouldn't need to pay extra.
 
The idea of a bank transfer kind of sets off red flags for me. If there's one thing that people warn you about getting scammed with, it's that. I don't honestly think Craig and Co. would run off with all our money, but it's still kind of iffy...
 
I preordered via bank transfer in the first place. It's they way we do it in Germany. CCs aren't so common here.
 
I think smanky has valid and reasonable points. Even so, I'm prepared to stretch that little bit further to cover the CC fee for the good of the project. At least we are getting something valuable in return for the hassle (and the second batch will cost that much extra anyway).
 
I thought OPL had a USD account, as a lot of stuff they are buying for the Panda is coming from the US. Maybe you should fire off an email and enquire whether you can transfer funds there, or whether thats a dedicated account for something else.
 
Whether you consider the terms of reorder to be fair or not, they are what they are. We cannot afford to "eat" any more costs. We're selling the Pandora at a razor thin margin and we're already losing quite a bit on this batch. We are not going to bankrupt the project just because you don't think it's fair to have to pay a couple extra bucks. Sure, a big company would probably absorb the extra costs, but they could afford to do so, since they'd also be charging several hundred dollars more for the device in the first place.

You can reorder with a bank transfer or with a credit card plus a negligible fee. These are the only terms available. The only other option is to not to reorder at all and wait for a future batch.
 
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