[ic] blocking customers

[Karl Uhlig]

Interchange Admin wrote:

>On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 03:35:59PM +0100, Kevin Walsh wrote:
>
>>>I have a client who has asked for something that I haven't seen
>>>discussed here and did not find via searches on the web site or
>>>mailing list.
>>>
>>>He has some customers that he would to prevent from being able to
>>>order due to having to constantly go after them to get them to pay.
>>>
>>>Has anyone come up with a simple (!!!) way to do this.
>>>
>>>Note: He does not use any of the standard interfaces that comes
>>>with Interchange.  The site is very simple and is exactly what
>>>he wants.  (www.captemo.com, if interested).
>>>
>>The simplest way is to just not process orders from those customers;
>>just mark them as 'cancelled', 'denied' or whatever when they come in.
>>
>>If they actually provide a credit card and pay then the goods can be
>>sent.  If they don't, and they are on your blacklist then just cancel
>>the order.
>>
>>It doesn't get any simpler than that. :-)
>>
>
>Yes, I agree, that is quite simple.  However, how do you recognize
>them as the bad guy?
>
>Address?  "1234 Main Street" "1234 Main St." and "1234 Main St" are
>all valid but are also all different to a computer!
>
>email?  How many email addresses do you have?  I have about 10 that
>I check daily.  And that doesn't count hotmail, etc....
>
>A lot of customers that use this site do not have credit cards as
>they are "kids", so we had to allow for "money orders".  This is
>where the trouble starts.  We usually give the person two weeks to
>send in the money.  Then a couple of nagmails.  Then the item is
>returned to available status.  This is a month or so of time that
>the item can not be sold to someone that will actually pay for it!
>
>Thanks.
>
>jaime
>

IMHO the low tech solution to this problem is the best one.

When marketing to children who may or may not be able to save their 
allowance to pay for what they ordered this week, but may be able to 
manage it sometime in the future, it seems that it is counterproductive 
to create a blacklist.  The better solution is to calculate from past 
history what percentage never send in payment and only hold the amount 
of inventory needed to cover the orders that statistically will be paid. 
 Creating the blacklist has the whole range of problems that you already 
mentioned, plus it assumes that children cannot learn responsibility or 
ever straighten out their finances to pay for your product or never be 
able to get their parents to order it for them.

Karl