Hidden use of earnings during order placement

[Bailamor]

Hi. I made my first purchase from Zazzle today, which included four items. However, upon placing my order, I noticed that the order process did not reflect that 25 dollars of my earnings would be used. I only became aware of this when I read the email confirmation of my order. I immediately attempted to cancel the order, but it was no longer possible.

I ended up paying 72$ for two of the cheapest notebooks and two of the cheapest keychains. Moreover, two of the items were even my own designs!

Has anyone else had a similar experience where it was not immediately apparent how the use of your earnings during an order placement would affect the total??

The shipping costs are inbelievable high.

[ColsCreations]

Has anyone else had a similar experience where it was not immediately apparent how the use of your earnings during an order placement would affect the total??.

No. There's always been a box to check if you want to use your earnings balance towards the order or not. In my case it's always been checked by default. Just put something in my cart to see if anything has changed but the option is still there.

And yeah, shipping is ridiculous if one doesn't have Zazzle Plus. According to this, shipping on this one postcard would have been $13.31. That's probably the rate for next-day though that they use to make it comparable to the next-day you get with Plus Premium which I have.

[Bailamor]

Thank you for your reply! 

I checked by starting a new order, and i don't have the checkbox (although i still have enough cleared earnings left).

 

It shows 5 dollars shipping costs now. For my order (2 keychains and 2 notebooks) they charged 37 $ . Maybe i misclicked a wrong shipping method, but it wasn't very obvious to me. I definitely didn't understand when and where the 25 $ of my earnings were shown to be used....

Well, at least now i can better understand why sales are being cancelled.

[BKMuir]

@Bailamor  I just checked and the two screens shown by you and @ColsCreations are not the same.

If you had clicked on the PAY NOW orange button at bottom, you should have seen the final screen that Cols shows. It has the checkbox to unmark if you don't wish the savings to be used. I'm not certain, but it seems that they have revamped the checkout pages a little.

[Bailamor]

Thank you. Seems that i wasn't very attentive during the order placement, because i was in hurry and at work, and also i didn't expect such shipping costs. Or it wasn't clear to me what earning balance meant. 

Anyways, I will contact them directly to see if i clicked a wrong shipment method or if 37 $ is really the normal price, and maybe i can still change to Zazzle plus..

[Bailamor]

I think i found a solution that i want to share for information. 

I cancelled my original order, selected zazzle plus but this somehow does not seem to reduce the costs (not sure if why): 

But then i logged out of my US account and logged into my german account. Added the same products. Zazzle plus apparently does not apply for germany, but the overall shipping costs seem to be cheaper. I would have expected that zazzle automatically chooses the best print factory/shipping conditions based on shipping/order address, but it does not seem to be the case.

So, it seems that the log-in account does affect the calculated costs.

Maybe this information is useful for someone. Maybe also someone can explain why zazzle plus somehow does not apply in the first two pictures...

[Bailamor]

Also now i can see what confused me in the first place. The calculation says the total is $45. But the total is $33 + $ 37 = $70 , and $25 is used from earnings..

This is very confusing, zazzle....

[Sara_H]

@Bailamor  I'm in the UK and always order via the uk website as customs is covered. You should always order from the domain for the country that you are based in.

There are certain international domains where zazzle plus is not available (I believe .de is one of them - possibly .au too)

[Wesha]

Hey @Bailamor I think you will have the free shipping after your Zazzle Plus Free trial activates , meaning you need to buy it first and wait till it activates and then place the order to automatically have free shipping ! 

[Bailamor]

Okay, so if zazzle plus is activated and working, it would be cheaper buying from the us account (since all shipping costs would be free). I will try again once zazzle plus is activated, but maybe it wouldn't apply to shipping costs to Germany. 

Without zazzle plus it's cheaper to place the order from the country of origin apparently (actually, it seems zazzle is not very common in Germany. Most european sales are from uk.) 

Good to know, i will analyze it further. But maybe my posts will also help others 🙂 

[ColsCreations]

I don't know anything about foreign domains and being located outside the US and how that complicates everything, but that reminds me - when applying Earnings Balance to an order, you can only use the amount earned in US dollars, so the earnings balance it shows you can use might be lower than your actual Current Available Balance.

[Bailamor]

Yes, that would be a little bit lower. But there was not even the checkbox in the process from the german account (see the last photo). I don't know why.

However, money is money, and it's also always a little bit lower when transferred to my bank account unfortunately :D.

[Sara_H]

@Bailamor  the reason that checkbox isn't there on .de could be that the fact that you haven't earned enough in euros to be taken off? Or it could be a coding issue that zazzle has forgot to add? Dunno

I know on .uk it has to be money earned in gbp (it doesn't calculate any other currency in balance - only cleared £'s in my case) so even if I have a cleared balance to use that's been converted to my currency - it will only calculate cleared £s that I got from uk sales if that makes sense.

On the earning page it states "only cleared earnings generated in your primary currency may be used for purchases at this site"