Order warnings

Now that your orders are rolling in you might notice they don’t all go as planned. Don’t worry, we’ve compiled a list of the warnings you may see in your Orders page to help get a better understanding of what’s going on so you can make sure your customer gets their goods, and you get paid.

Billing Zip Discrepancy

If your customer enters a different postal code for their shipping address than they do in their billing details section, you’ll see this billing zip discrepancy status instead of a paid status.

This on its own is not necessarily proof that fraud is taking place, but proceed with caution if anything else with the order seems suspicious.

Spotting Fraud

While only a small percentage of sales are actually fraudulent, you may have noticed that some of these issues are related to specific actions taken by your customer. Fraud is something all businesses need to protect against, but it’s especially important when running an online store.

We have some common red flags, tips, and other information available in our fraud guide. It’s best to read up on this in advance, so you know what to look out for when an order seems fishy.

Pending Payment

There are a few reasons a payment may be delayed from PayPal. Hold off on shipping anything until you see a "completed" status for that order.

The most common reason for a large amount of orders marked as pending in the admin is because you don’t have a verified PayPal account, or your email address isn’t confirmed with PayPal. You can take care of this quickly by logging into your PayPal account and checking these settings.

If the customer chose to pay with an eCheck for their order, you might see that pending status while PayPal processes that eCheck. Just like a regular check, it usually takes between 3 and 5 business days for it to clear. Once it clears, the order will be updated and you’ll see that paid status in your admin letting you know it’s safe to send that order out. You can always log in to your PayPal account to get some more details on the status of that payment.

Failed Payment

Hold up, don’t ship any items. It looks like there was a problem with the payment method your customer used. Get in touch with them and ask that they try another payment method before going any further with that shipment. It’s best to think of this as a bounced check - it’s just not going to clear so they’ll need to find another way to pay.

Invalid Payment

There’s a high chance this could be a result of fraud, so definitely do not ship any items at this point. This warning is because the amount charged for the order is not the amount the customer actually paid.

Or it’s possible your customer’s payment failed shortly after the order was placed - contact your customer and ask them to try the order again.

Fraud Alert

If you don’t recognize the email address where the money was sent, you’ll want to reach out to the customer and contact PayPal directly to investigate. Until you hear back regarding the status of the payment, it’s best to hold off on fulfilling an order marked with this alert.

Shipping Discrepancy

This can happen if your customer selected a different shipping country on the Cart page than they did on your offsite PayPal checkout page.

It’s also possible this isn’t your customer’s fault and your PayPal shipping profile is getting in the way. Double check your PayPal shipping calculations and make sure they aren’t overriding your Big Cartel shipping settings.

Ultimately, it’s up to you on how to handle this. If you can afford to eat the cost on your end and show some good faith, it might be worth it from a customer service perspective. Or you can always refund the payment and ask the customer to try again. Be sure to remind them to choose the same shipping destination in your Big Cartel store as they do when entering their shipping details in your offsite PayPal checkout page.