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We've made some big changes over the month of July to
the website with upgraded shopping cart and our own Secure Virtual Private
Server with our own Security Certificate. The changes will only appear to you as small changes
probably but it
will make us MUCH more efficient! It will definitely,
definitely reduce errors that we seem to be spending more and more
time on. (20% of all credit cards come in with incorrect information
from typos!!) This will, unless we're mistaken, reduce our office
time by half which will mean more time for more important matters
like working on the website and growing plants!! If
you're a new customer, you won't notice any of these as 'changes'!
If you're a repeat customer, this is what will be different:
1. You will no longer have to 'Empty
Cart' after you place your order. It will happen
automatically which saves you a step and stops accidental duplicate
orders.
2. Credit Cards are now charged
immediately online DURING the check out process via one of the
most recognized, reputable companies in commerce - Quickbooks
Merchant Services (who has always processed our credit cards but it
was done by us in house after the order came in and now it will be
done during check out).
3. You will still get the Instant Order
Confirmation page online BUT now, a near Instant E-mail
Confirmation of your order will be sent. You will
still get a mail (usually in 1-3 days), confirming ship date but in
the meantime, you have two confirmations - online and e-mail - so
you know for sure your order has been received. AND if you
don't get that instant E-mail, you will know that your submitted
E-mail address is wrong, your mail box is full or for some reason we
can't communicate with you, in which case, you should contact us.
4. You can now 'Register' with us if
you don't want to have to type billing and shipping address every
time. We will do away with the 'Cookie' that
remembered your information in the past because alas, often people didn't realize
it was 'remembering' out of date information, including comments or
that a order being submitted was an 'add on' order when in
fact it wasn't. (Even comments from the previous year showed up!)
You will also be able to look your
last order if you Register.
5. You will still be able to Add to a
Previous Unshipped Order but it will be calculated and done
online rather than in house. The rate on very small orders
will be a bit higher than when hand calculated BUT there will be no
charge for this service, where in the past, there was a $3.00 charge
after the first one to pay staff time for doing this by hand. Now you will know instantly that the 'Add
On' order has been received and not have to wait to hear from us.
5a.
The 17th Plant:
We can ship up to 16 plants in a box. When we go over 16
plants (the 17th or multiples thereof), we must go to a 2nd box. If your 'Add On
Order' is in fact a
17th plant or multiple thereof, the online calculator has no way to know
what you previously ordered, so a $4.80 base box charge will be
added in house. With USPS, an empty box starts at $4.80 and goes
up with weight.
5b. Time
Frame for Add Ons: Unfortunately,
the time frame must change a bit from 7 to 10 days prior to the
scheduled ship week because, alas, lots of folks simply made
that request too late which left staff scurrying around at the last
minute, trying to pull the added plants and often getting frantic and
occasionally the customer 'ruffled' when we just couldn't pull it
off. Often even with 7 days, due to the day of the week we
downloaded the order, added on plants didn't make the Monday morning
'Pull Sheet'.
6. In House Credits are no More. IHC's
have been a standard Option for plants not available at ship time
will now be offered via E-mail to customers on a case by case basis
when clearly it might be a good choice due to a larger number of
plants. About 95% of customers selecting 'In House Credit'
(the default) when placing their order, turned around and asked for
a Cancel and Refund anyway -- so basically we've let 'customers'
vote this out of practice! The 5% exception was on large
orders when multiple plants weren't available. Then the
customers actually used the In House Credit. In a case like
that, via E-mail, we'll offer this to specific customers when it
actually seems likely they might want to use it. It will
however, by necessity, be given as a Gift Certificate with Gift Code
since the credit would need to be available during check out not a
credit 'In House'.
7. Gift Certificates will change from
being a physical Plastic Card to being a printable E-Gift
Certificate. Our current method of assigning a Gift Code won't
work with the shopping cart AND make the Gift Certificate useable
during check out.
8. There is no longer a 70 pound Weight
Limit for orders. Fortunately USPS Web Tools has made it
possible for us to get rid of that annoyance realizing that many
vendors shipping USPS have to ability to use more than one box when
the order goes over 70 pounds. Eureka!
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