Not for Sale items

[JLynn]

Putting a question out there - maybe some of your will have a better solution. I have some products that I'm listing "not for sale" or in my case...I've changed the store language to "Custom Orders Only".

I clicked the "Not for sale" box in the admin/product page and added some wording to put in place of the price. I was originally thinking that the buy it now button would remain (so a customer could still add this to the cart and be charged at a later date once the custom order estimate was agreed upon - attaching the request directly to the specific product) - and the buy it now button remains on the sub-cat page - but when you go to the product detail page - it disappears. It would be nice to designate the button language when you change your selling options within a product (as in changing the wording from add to cart to Custom Question if you have the product designated as "Not for Sale") - while still keeping it functional for the cart.

So I'm trying to figure out the best way to have a customer "contact us" or place a "Custom Order" without creating a lot of fuss or having to re-type in a lot of information on the general contact us page - and it would be less confusing for all if the inquiry tied in directly from the product - since the [id] was missing from the detail page, I've added that in the listing page - so at least the customer can refer to that in a contact form.

Now I realize that I can create a content page for a new Custom Order Form and then link it up through the description area - I would probably need to have the customer type in the ID product number...but does anyone have any other ideas that might be easier for the customer to inquire about a custom order or place a special order from the product detail page?

[jhb]

If you have an image for the item, I added a custom mailto html link to one of our image captions. This enables the customer to mail us there email info with specific info in the subject and body if you want. The customer could change the custom info in their email client but that is a risk you have to take.

[ScribeTime]

For some of our personalized products we have a drop-down box for options. For instance for "choose quantity", one of the options states, "Have a representative contact me". This would be for someone who wanted to order more than the set quantity that we have listed in the drop-down menu/box.

The price for the "Have a representative contact me" is of course set to "0".

The customer can then add the item to their cart, we get an order with much of the pertinent information and the "no payment required" message.

We are then able to call the customer to get more information to complete or discuss the transaction.

Kind of a simple workaround that I hope makes sense...

[JLynn]

Since I've coded (pun intended) on codes...I'm not wanting to add any more html or scripts anywhere LOL...but thanks for that thought jhb!

With the adding an option...Scribetime you are suggesting that I create a category option for "Contact us" with a dropdown and assign a negative cost so it balances out to zero? Or just price the custom order regular price at zero? This particular item is by custom only, so adjusting the price to zero with reference to be determined or setting the cost for 50% deposit of the estimated price might work. Or if I create two options - one for contact us with questions, and another for Custom Order Deposit with an amount. Guess I'm still a tad confused on where you did this - but I certainly like the sounds of this get-around ...the customer fills in all the required options as if they were ordering it and then an invoice with the final amount due can be sent via Pay Pal or even through 3D - I think we have that option for sending an invoice with an amount due???

My quantity option on all the products is set for a fill-in box - and I couldn't seem to locate where to change that, unless it's a different style or template than what I'm using...or are you talking about another area in the product pages?

[ScribeTime]

I assigned a cost of $0 to the product and added custom Display Text for the price (found under Advanced Options on the product page in the admin panel). Typical display text that I've used may say something like, "Starting at $100".

I set the cost at $0 and either the customer chooses a quantity that we already have listed in the drop-down box and the price is then automatically adjusted or they choose the option saying something like, "For quantities over 1000 - Have a representative contact me." This option keeps the cost at $0.

As far as invoices, I've had to create a second invoice (using the phone order feature) to process the order once the product details and amount are finalized (referencing the original sales order number in the internal comments section). It's not perfect, but has worked okay.

Regarding the Quantity option - I manually set this up under the Options tab for a product. In the very first box you can select the type of option -(i.e. Dropdown, radio, checkbox, text, textarea, dropimage, file (for the customer to upload) or title. I've sometimes used the title option to put an instruction for a particular option.

Hope that helps and if anyone has a better workaround, I'd be interested as well.

[JLynn]

Here's another thing I ran into and not sure if I've tried everything possible...maybe someone has some other ideas?

These custom products are now set with a zero price, with a "starting at $" under the advanced tabs. Additionally they are assigned to a specific sub-category under Jewelry, as well as assigned to a "Collection" (I'm utilizing the sort by manufacturer as a "Browse by Collection"). My default sort for all categories is set for a low to high price. My problem is that because these have a "0" price, they are showing up at the top/beginning of the category page - I would actually like to have them show up at the bottom no matter what sort the customer picks from the drop down list. I was hoping that if the product did not have a price designated and was utilizing the write in option from advanced tabs, it would automatically come last which isn't the case.

I've tried....
- Entering the retail price in again to see if the write in from the advanced tab would override it - the system kept my write in for the price, but ALSO added the price back in (another line) but still kept them at the top/beginning.
- Manually entered the sort number under products/sorting - right now because I have the default set, and the fact there are so many products, all of these are set at zero. So for these custom pieces, I put the sort number at 100,110,120, etc. and saved. This did nothing - the category default took preference.
- Also changed my category default sort to "order by" - kept the sort number for these specific products at the 100, 110, 120, etc. numbers. Which did place them last in the list...until you changed the sort order from low to high (from the drop down list), and then they're listed first - right back at the top.

Now...I know I could group these separately in their own "Custom" sub-category under Jewelry/Browse by product - but I really wanted the pieces to show up in their corresponding categories (Earrings, Bracelets, Necklaces, etc.) and since I already have a Custom Collection set up under the next Browse by section - I was avoiding that.

Does anyone know if I can somehow force the sort to place all numerical numbers starting at .01 and up first - and then take the products that have the text overrides on the text? Maybe add a code in the category listing or search templates? Or any other ideas??