Why unpaid orders must be cancelled and our reaction to complaints

We received a negative review and an angry message on facebook about our shop and our services.

Although I find it under our niveau to react to such unprofessional messages personally, I just want to clarify our terms and conditions and explain why we HAVE TO cancel unpaid orders. This is all mentioned in our terms and conditions that every single customer MUST read and accept before checking-out but according to experience I know that less than 1% of customers (me inclused) read those boring terms and conditions.

1- The difference between an order and a wishlist

It seems to me that unfortunately some people are still unaware of the difference between a wish list and an order.

With a wish list, you can add as many items to your chart as you wish and you can keep them as long as you desire. It is possible that the price of your items change with time or that one or other item is sold-out but nobody is going to charge you for a wish list. And we actually encourage our customers (at least those in the EU) to make a wish list and add their items till they reach the sum which is eligible for free shipping in the EU (150,00 € at this time)

An order however, is different from a wish list. When you check-out from the shop, you make an order. There is a box that you should check you have read and accepted terms and conditions and then you order "subjected to charges" or "gebührenpflichtig" when you check out.

This means, you have made a CONTRACT with us and that violating that contract would be subject to charges.

2- We happily answer your questions before, during and after making an order

At SkinChakra, we boast to offer the highest level of technical support before, during and after you make your orders. I claim this because of hundreds of repeating customers that come back to us and pay the expensive shipping charges that we demand because they are satisfied with the quality of our products and our services. More than 90% of our turnover is from repeating customers. We do not under sell our ingredients and most of our ingredients are not even unique. Our customers however come back to us because they appreciate and acknowledge the time, effort, passion and love we put into each order regardless of the order value.

Long story short: ask your questions before checking-out. When you have checked out, you have made an order, a contract. You can not make an order and then decide: oh the shipping costs are too high. I'm not going to continue. Well, you certainly can and we are not going to sue you (although we legally can do it).

BUT we encourage you to ask your questions BEFORE making an order and receiving an invoice and we happily answer all your questions (except for technical support about the ingredients which is bound to a purchase) about the shipping costs, delivery time, expiry date etc. When an order is made and an invoice is issued, you are legally bound to a contract.

We even modify your order/invoice free of charge (I'm sure most of our competitors do not do this) when you realize that you have forgotten something or you want to delete something. It doesn't help any of us if you do not pay an invoice and make a new order because you want to change your items.

We even make it easy for you to change your order after having paid the invoice. If you pay the invoice and then realize that you have forgotten some items, we pack your new items free of shipping charges as long as the first order has not been shipped.

3- White listing our mail address

I honestly can not understand how a business can function with free mail accounts such as gmail, web.de, hotmail, yahoo etc. but that is not my business. However is becomes my business when these free mail supplier block our mails and send them to junk box or completely swallow them.

When you works with any of these accounts, and you make an order, make sure you have white listed us and that you receive our mails. It doesn't solve the problem if you don't receive our mails and keep sending us mails or making new orders. And this is something you need to change at YOUR end in order to white list us and receive our mails.

4- Why we must cancel unpaid orders

I don't know how it is with other suppliers and other countries. In Germany, we have the tax authorities in our hair the whole time. This means, for every issued invoice, we are bound to pay the income tax and the VAT and profit tax and city tax and devil knows what else. Tax authorities do not understand your humor and will charge us for every issued invoice no matter whether we have received a payment or not (unless we cancel the invoice). The invoices have serial numbers that we (and tax authorities) can not easily ignore or undo or make-disappear.

Every single invoice you receive has a due time (usually one week) which is quite a reasonable time even for bank transactions. Before this time is elapsed, we send you a reminder (at least once) asking you whether you are going to proceed. When we do not receive any payment, or any response to our communication, we HAVE TO cancel the invoice/order. We can not keep an invoice unsettled for an eternity otherwise we have to pay the taxes for it.

Remember: you have order subject to charges. This means, we can and shall legally sue you with additional charges when you do not pay an invoice and do not cancel your order (whatever the reasons). But we don't do this.

However, we allow ourselves to black list you and do not process any further orders of you. This is clearly mentioned in our terms and conditions that you HAVE to read and confirm before checking out. If you don't take us and your own business seriously and do not answer to our comminications, we allow ourselves to dedicate our time to customers who take us and their own business seriously. Is that not fair enough? What do you do yourself with customer who don't take your business seriously? I would very much like to hear your opinion and advice.

BeHappy and have fun