Shop Payments -- Help Me Get to the Bottom of This!

Hi everyone,

There have been a few cases these last few months where shopowners seem to be facing trouble over their shop payments. Whether it's a matter of unclear communication from us, or errors in our system, I want to get to the bottom of this.

I've opened up a conversation with some of the rest of my team and at this point I want to collect feedback from shopowners in the community. I do understand that in many cases, thoughts on this have been voiced in other threads in the past, but this is an effort to collect information in one centralized place. Here's the info I'm looking for:

1) Any particular cases where you've had issues with your shop payments.

2) Suggestions for changes you'd like to see in how we structure your payments, notify you about your payments, and so on.

I'm all ears!

payment details on my shop section are not clear.

Should be 3 sections.

will pay next payout
not yet cleared
life earnings

for better transparency you should report all sales not just those with a profit.

Thanks!

I was already thinking a few things along those same lines. Good to hear it from your side as well.

Currently "life earnings" include "will pay next payout" and "not yet cleared".
I suggest "life earnings" should exclude the two other categories.
So we would have:
- What has already been paid (sum of all the previous payments)
- What will be paid next month (or next payment to be more precise)
- What will be paid later, if cleared (orders of less than one month, that can still be cancelled)

Concerning the payments themselves, I never had any issue at all.
I just had a doubt once (a "your model has been shipped" notification wihout any "yipee you sold a model" notification: after asking the CS, I was confirmed that this was a reprint due to the first shipment being lost).

As above for payments clarity.

And to add that for all of my pay-outs (except the last one) I had to request the pay-out as it did not happen automatically (the paranoid side of me also thinks that there is a possibility of missing reported sales, but the sensible side says 'trust them')

Paul, hmm the fact that your paranoid side has to do any thinking is as much of the problem as anything else. We need to make sure you guys feel our system is a trustworthy one!

I've got no complaints. I have a process that manipulates the OrderSummary spreadsheet to keep track of my orders/payments.

In 18 months of doing this.. there has been twice when my payment didn't match what I expected, but then it caught up (to the penny) the next month. I think some of that is due to delays in the shipping of individual items. (that's another reason I'd like to see the ship date in the OrderSummary sheet)

There have been a couple of times when the payment wasn't made exactly on the 15th.. but for the small amount of money that I earn, that's tolerable.

+1 for separating past / current / future payouts

@Paul , let your paranoia go overboard especially if you're a big earner on shapeways

Check and double check anything about your sales and payments - trust is earned and when you give it away just like that you might get what i had to endure since 2010 !

I was asked by Ana to "weigh in" on this thread from a previous one where i was asked by ceramicwombat why do i feel things are crooked at shapesways ... (i'm done with pretty words and EU politeness)


It begun at the end of 2010 , where over $1200 of my logged markup was missing ! - hounders of dollars were skimmed for each of the last 3 pay-period of 2010 .... the whole story is here:
https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&&th=5 616&goto=32646#msg_32646

After 3 weeks of no reply to my emails i threatened i will take action - only then Bart intervened and my money was paid in 2 installments...


Here is what Ana wrote me after i reopened my shop in march 2010:
See also Bart comments on this Blog post ...

https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/787-The-Dizzying-Dema nd-for-Dungeons-Dragons-Dice.html


But that did not stop - i posted countless posts of sales not logged in the xsl file, co creators fulfilled but not logged , co creator jobs appearing but aren't found in the system (funny how they had customers names on them...) - i wont bore you more with this.

My blunt conclusion is Shapeways has been skimming my sales & my markups and i cant say i'm the only shop owner who suffered this shameful conduct.

I'm not fooled by sweet talking this issue as "system errors" , this site is NO LONGER in Beta

Today i found out i get ZERO markup on a model on the gifts page:

https://www.shapeways.com/gifts/

Click on my Dymaxion World Map model , add it to your cart - you will see the that the price is the cost to print WITHOUT my markup !! :twisted:

I demand to know all and every single sale this model has made and to be paid my markup !



No more excuses - shapeways STOP skimming and stealing my sales and markups !!


Enough is Enough !!

Asher, the price in the guide is manually typed, not derived from your model page. When I look at your Dymaxion page the prize is indeed the $24.02 that shows in the cart, not the $28.92 written in the guide. Log off and take a look: https://www.shapeways.com/model/364764/

I had the co-creator issue in January and immediately started a thread: https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=4456&a mp;start=0&

It turned out what was happening was that when someone customized an item it was being piped back to our accounts as if we had customized it. If they added it to their cart it showed as an order, even though they never bought it. That is why they aren't in the Excel file. When this bug was fixed they disappeared from our order lists. What I thought was a huge malfunctioning sales spike turned out to just show me how many people customize a co-creator but then don't go through in purchasing it (about 90%). Hopefully that helps clarify at least some of the problems you are experiencing.

Another thing that is confusing (which was already described here in a different way) is that the monthly payment is on a month delay to allow time to process the orders. You will never actually see the same amount pending as you recieve in the payment unless you do not have sales for more than a month, because the pending amount includes the current month.

Aaron, the price on my model is the ACTUAL cost-to-print.
ZERO markup.

If it was entered manually why without my initial markup which made it $28.92?

I know all about co-creators explanations... do a search on the forum for my posts , you will see plenty more added to yours..

Skimming an affiliate on the web isn't something new , the word actually derived from affiliate programs gone to the dark side ...

Affiliate programs usually skim about 20% of their affiliates earnings to cover for unexpected costs such as refunds, charge backs and other overhead expense.


This should not happen here on shapeways !

And not on my account endless times !!!! :twisted:



Enough is Enough !!!

Prices:
Detail page: 24.02 (or 28.58 if country with VAT)
Shop index page: 24.02 (or 28.58)
Cart page: 24.02 (or 28.58)
Gifts section: 28.92 (always)

Which should be the right price?

What's really funny about this is that you are complaining that you aren't making profit off this model, when it is simply another model you copied from the Google Warehouse. Dymaxion World Map at Google Warehouse

Taff Goch created a great model of the Fuller's map projection and shared it with the world. He has tons of really awesome math models and I hope he brings more of them to Shapeways. It would have been polite for you to at least credit the creator of the model if you are going to try to profit from it.

I have to agree...dizingof, it is difficult to have much sympathy when so many of your models are "skimmed" from others' portfolios. To name some of those that are plainly and immediately related to my own work, your "Joint Stars", "Linked Stars Pendant" and "Linked Stars 2", are extremely derivative.

I don't doubt your skill as a modeler: to replicate these designs as well as you have is work, and I'm certainly flattered that you bothered. However I think that someone of your ability might occupy your time more productively by making original designs, or at least in taking a few seconds to add credit where it is due.

That you don't see a need to do either, makes me question the integrity of your complaints about Shapeways.

Too, as a retailer I well know that some customers are never satisfied, and while your complaints may be justified, you're not helping your case by acting like one of them. I suggest taking the dispute offline. I'd welcome news of its resolution, but while it's in process I -- your fellow Shapeways customer -- can't help you in any way. You're doing yourself no good here.

I am missing about 3.4% of my payments for the last three months. All of the other payments (back to September 2009) have been spot-on. CS is already looking in to it.

Maybe it would be a good idea to change the markup overview to say "settled on 15-11-2011" instead of just "settled". This way it is easier for us to track what has been paid when.

I'm sure more and more shop owners will start check and double check their sales, markups and their logging.

I sincerely hope that the FACTS i presented here especially the $1200+ of missing markups from my account, some of you are choosing to ignore , are a one time mess up!



@Aaron, print me a time keeper, i promise i will like you.

@Bathsheba shapeways will not dare mess with your sales/markups..

I told you that I never had any issue on the payments and actually I had verified 10 payments in a row and they were all exact: no cent more, no cent less.
But I followed Dizingof's recommendation and I checked the more recent payments.
It seems that there are errors on the 3 last ones: sometime some money is missing and some time there is too much money. Overall they gave me $20 more than what they should.
The mistakes are only on the 3 last payments (19/09/2011, 14/10/2011 and 15/11/2011).
I sent the data to the customer service and to Ana: I hope this can help to solve the problem.

So indeed there is an issue. Shapeways is aware of this issue (thus this thread). But Shapeways is not systematically (nor intentionally) reducing our earnings since I have got too much.

To come back to the possible improvements, I think that something that would be great is for each payment having the details of the models paid. In other words, a detailed invoice.

What would also be great: if you could offer us one easy way to download all the markup invoices (zipped) for a certain month/quarter/year. Saves me digging in to my email to download all of them.

Are you aware of the Order Summary spreadsheet? Check the Excel icon at the top left of your shop.

I agree that some status changes need a date with them.

Especially on instances where models were canceled after the markup payout takes places.

I have noticed that payments since the delayed September one (which had a note : delayed because of technical difficulties)
do not match with the order overview amounts.

But it is only minor amounts and I trust things will be corrected once they find and fix the bug.

Edit December 1st: The error has been corrected and missing markup payed out

Just to chime in here, so far I've been so happy with Shapeways honesty and professional business practice. I don't think I've ever dealt with an online business that is more friendly and helpful. The website itself could be made a little bit better for functionality, I think that may be the problem with mark-up prices getting "skimmed", due to technical issues.