I posted this on the scrapologie message boards yesterday but wanted to make sure everyone sees it, so you may eventually get this in an email in addition to reading it there and on the blog here.
We shipped a ton of kits yesterday, and I am finishing up the last leg of all the kit and store purchases that were made through the store. I still have several kits that have not been purchased that are marked for subscribers, so if you haven't yet purchased yours through the store, we will try to invoice you. I hope all subscribers know that you CAN purchase your kit through the store, you don't have to wait for me to invoice you - but we'll get to you shortly if you haven't paid yet. Hopefully this is the last month we will have to do this!
Subsequently, we *do* have a handful of kits available but I am not sure how many, and won't know for certain until shipping is completed and we've heard from all our subscribers. We'll make every attempt to email and invoice you, but if you haven't paid for your kit and we don't hear from you by Monday (or if you haven't made prior arrangement with me to manually charge your credit card), then we will start placing unclaimed kits with non-subscribers who have requested them.
Starting next month, our shopping cart will be able to capture credit card information and automatically charge you for your kit every month. It's still being worked on but we hope to have it in place for October. At some point in the next couple of weeks we will ask subscribers to enter their information in the store to enable this.
For this month only, you may either purchase your kit through the store (click on the SHOPPING link and then on KITS at the top of the list, then again on the box labeled KITS and it will give you a three month or six month subscriber purchase option). Or you can pay the paypal invoice you will receive from me if we haven't heard from you.
Moving forward from October, I think I can handle invoicing a *limited* number of people on paypal directly, but I will say here that I'd really prefer for everyone who can, to go with the autocharge system, and I will tell you why. We decided to go this route mostly to save time. It takes quite a bit of time as things currently stand, to figure out who has paid, who hasn't paid, to manually invoice the people that haven't paid and try to figure out if they want the kit or not, and process the shipments of the ones who have paid, and that doesn't even address all the emails we get from customers with special requests. (Not that emails or special requests are a problem - but just to give you an idea of what slows the process down). And then there was the fiasco we had with the new shopping cart this month - figuring out the errors, processing refunds and invoicing for monies owed!) By going to the autocharge system, it will just enable me to be faster and more efficient. It frustrates me that it takes me 2-3 weeks to get everyone paid and shipped because it leaves precious little time for me to plan for the next month's debut (not to mention ordering for the following months), and to boot, it's just not what I want in terms of turnaround time between when the order is placed and when you receive your kit.
As a result, we are also going to be much stricter from hereon out about skipped kits and when you notify us of your intent to skip. Once the charges go through for the given month, there will be no skips honored. We haven't figured out the whole piece but most likely we will run the charges probably a day or two after the kit debuts. I believe that the site is being built so that you will have a skip button to notify us of your intent to skip a kit, and once you use up your allotted skips, you won't be able to use the skip button again until you've fulfilled the terms of your subscription.
Also, we are probably going to start everyone anew in January at month 1, because in January, everyone will be at the same pricing, which is not the case now (our oldest customers are at a discounted rate). So what that means is that even if you have a six month sub now, all active subscriptions will expire at the end of December and be renewed as a month 1 in January.
So having said that, I will agree to invoice a small number of people, and will continue to do so, providing that they respond in a timely manner to the invoices sent, and there will be a cut-off, beyond which everyone else will be required to get set up on the autocharge system.
These changes are being made in hopes that we can ultimately provide better service to the customer base as a whole. I hope to blog a bit about the process of how a scrapologie kit comes together so you can understand what goes on behind the scenes. It's certainly something we enjoy but we need to get more efficient at this, to serve you better and to save me time and sanity! Hope you have a wonderful Friday, and if you are still kitless, you won't be for much longer!
And now, for those of you wanting a peek at October...the October kit is called Signet and Scribe. It's going to be sort of a writing themed kit. The theme is journaling, writing, documenting, anything we can do to document the unexamined and re-examined pieces of our lives. The Signet idea comes from the a very wonderful something that has been ordered as a supplement, but also, more figuratively, the idea of putting your "seal" on something, the idea of placing your "mark" upon the world by leaving a written and visual record.
So here's a peek at a lovely little goodie that is going to be in the October kit supplements; they're adhesive labels for journaling, doodling, stamping, framing a small photo - they're lovely! Looking forward to sharing more with you soon!