Instant Purchase Feature of the Online Catalog
The Instant Purchase feature is used to sell items before the event and collect the money at the event. No credit cards are collected and there is no guarantee the person logged in will actually pay for the item. At anytime, the logged in user can change their mind and remove the instant purchase item from their purchased items. The Instant Purchase feature is turned on when today is between the BuyIt Turn On Date and the BuyIt Turn Off Date. Both these dates are found in the Manage Your Catalog form. The database must be online for this feature to operate. When an item has the following fields filled in then it becomes an Instant Purchase Item as long as the category that the item is in has a catalog print order number: Buy It Now = Yes, First Bid is filled in, Buy It Now Bid is filled in, Bump # is filled in, Online = Yes, and Online Status = buyit. “INSTANT PURCHASE” shows above the description of the item in the browse form. “Instant Purchase” is shown in the My List Column of the browse form. The Min Bid column is automatically cleared for an Instant Purchase item. On the detail page for the item, there is an “Instant Purchase” button in the top right. The following message is shown when you click the “Instant Purchase” button if you are logged on and the Instant Purchase feature is turned on:
Thank you for your instant purchase. Your item will be available for payment and pickup at the event. You can view the items you've purchased by going to 'My List' and clicking 'Purchased Items'.
The following message is shown when you click the “Instant Purchase” button when you have not either logged on or registered and the Instant Purchase feature is turned on:
You must login or register before you can use the instant purchase feature.
Once an item has been instant purchased, the Online Status is changed to “sold”. The word “SOLD” is shown above the description on both the browse form and the detail form. “Remove Purchase” is shown in the My List column of the browse form. On the detail page for a sold item, there is a “Remove this Instant Purchase” button. There are now two lists within the My List tab: My Wish List and Purchased Items. When the “Remove Purchase” button is clicked, the item is removed from the Purchased Items of the logged in user. No message is given. The item now is ready to be purchased by any user. The status “SOLD” is replaced with “INSTANT PURCHASE”. The report Instant Purchase within the Statistics report group generates an excel file that shows all the profile information associated with each item that has been purchased. This report should be run after the Instant Purchase feature has been turned off and the bidder numbers have been assigned for all those attending the event. The volunteer should write the bidder number next to each purchased item and then enter all of these in the Who Bought What form. Any purchasers not attending the event should be given a bidder number and the number attending should be zero. The term Instant Purchase is used on the web site instead of Buy It Now in order to not violate any copyright that Ebay may have. The term Buy It Now can be used on printed bid sheets since these items are not being sold online.