There are a number of instances when an order may be delayed so here’s a quick run down of the most common ones.
1. Payment marked as unpaid?
Paypal
Ocassionally orders paid using Paypal fail to update properly and require a nudge to show as completed. This is a known quirk, and one we keep an eye out for so don’t be unduly alarmed if your order shows as unpaid in such circumstances. We’ll let you know if there’s a problem but usually it just requires a quick update.
Credit/Debit Card (Stripe)
All credit/debit card processing services run various checks to ensure the card and order are genuine. We have certain rules in place that ensure that we can manually verify a payment before completing an order. While this can be slightly inconvenient we’ve chosen this approach instead of blanket rejection of payments that have typos in postcodes(zip), etc…
2. Fraud Alerts, High Value Orders, ID Check Required
As with all forms of remote purchasing the Internet is rife with problems of fraud, stolen cards, hacked Paypal accounts and more besides. This sort of crime affects not only businesses such as my own but also those whose accounts have been compromised.
To that end, if an order has any “red flags” that indicate it is either high risk or potentially fraudulent we reserve the right to require additional proof of identity and/or billing/shipping address.
The most obvious red flags are:
- Payee and recipient names different
- Billing/Shipping addresses obviously unrelated
- High value orders
- Bulk first time orders
- … and anything that just doesn’t “feel right”
If you have been asked for further proof to complete your order, this is not intended to inconvenience you, but protect all parties from fraud. Any information received is naturally treated in the strictest confidence and destroyed as soon as verification has been completed.
3. Weather, Seasonal Bottlenecks & Strikes.. .. and Pandemics!
In the past, the main issues affecting delivery speeds were weather, strikes and Brexit has certainly been a problem but when Covid-19 hit, the relative problems of old were eclipsed by the massive issues caused by the lockdowns, staff sickness and precautions that were (and are) being taken to mitigate the spread.
As we saw in 2010/11 the weather can have a massive impact on the transport/delivery networks and snow in particular seems to be a major problem. Other events where there is minimal warning such as industrial action have in the past caused problems that cause delays.
There are also times where things slow down due to the sheer volume of items moving through the delivery system such as Christmas so planning ahead and making allowances need to be made for these periods.
4. Stock Availability
Our policy is not to list items that are not in stock* as I recognise it’s frustrating to place and pay for an order only to have the order cancelled hours, days or even weeks later.
That said our inventory tracking system is not 100% perfect and occassionally items are shown in stock that are out by one or two units. In such instances customers are notified as soon as the mistake is noticed and an ETA provided on replacements.
*The only exception to this is when items are made available for pre-order, where that item has a reasonably solid release or re-stock date.
5. Order Declined/Rejected
In some rare instances we are forced to reject or decline orders where one or more of the following apply:
- No individual recipient is named
- Payment details are incomplete (eg: 3DSecure not passed)
- Address details are for a shipping-forwarder company
- Any other issue/variable that leads us to believe the transaction may be fraudulent
To date we have only rejected two genuine transactions against more than 50 that were attempted fraud. While inconvenient for two customers we have avoided significant loss to both ourselves and those whose bank or paypal accounts were compromised.
If your order is declined please contact us as soon as possible to discuss ways to resolve the issues we identified with your original order.