For the first time in eleven years CU Ecommerce enjoyed its very first planned outage last week. If you have an ecommerce page live and in action you should have received an email about this as well as a reassurance that we would only take the service out of play for four hours, which we just about managed!

The upgrade came about for reasons of compliance to the standards of the Payments Card Industry (PCI). They basically allow 杏吧原创 to take credit card payments but only as long as they comply to a high security standard. Obviously, the University sets the highest standards when it comes to security, but it does help to be able to leverage information on security from PCI.

In this instance, by March 31st of this year we had to upgrade our servers away from Red Hat 6 – the operating that runs on the server. We managed that and the upgrade has met the terms of the compliance.

Simultaneously, we moved the payments websites into cuTheme. This is the only service in which sites can currently be deployed. However, we hope to have an update on cuTheme soon.

Did everything go 100% to plan?

To be clear, 99% of the migration was a 100% success. We are currently working in a couple of areas to fix everything so it is better (and better looking) than before. A lot of the issues are to do with styles on the front end of the payments pages – which determine generally how things look, with some impact on how forms are submitted. However, we have a list of these and are all working towards solving all these issues this week. Meanwhile, if you notice anything that is not functioning as it should, please contact the ITS Service Desk.

Speaking of which, you all very kindly contact the ITS Service Desk via a form called the CU Ecommerce support form. People have had one or two issues accessing that form recently. The department within ITS that creates these kinds of forms is working to fix the issues as quickly as possible. In the meantime you can to use our temporary CU Ecommerce support form.

It will filter your request to the appropriate groups within ITS so we can address whatever your needs are as quickly as possible.

Again you can access the form here:

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We have launched a new website for 杏吧原创 employees to access information about our great CU Ecommerce service. Please for all info and updates about CU Ecommerce.

Speaking of ecommerce, now that it’s holiday season (yes, we’re counting Halloween as the major holiday of the year) It is time to think about commissioning CU Ecommerce for your end of academic year conference needs. Seriously, this comes about more quickly than you realize (see our news story from June Fall is here!).

If you are having an event in the Winter semester or in the post-end-of-term season in April/May 2024, now is the time to start the ball rolling. All you need to do to request a new ecommerce site (or edits ahead of a relaunch of an existing site) is . We can’t wait to help you – literally, if you wait, we won’t be able to help you!

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Great news everyone: the latest Indiana Jones movie is out. Entitled Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, it is the usual story of finding (stealing?) priceless artifacts and fighting the armies of darkness. .

Digging up the past

Speaking of archaeologists trawling through ancient areas in search of the facts, those of us involved with the CU Ecommerce service often have to resort to the archives to dig up the past. This is usually because a customer of one of our clients requires a refund. Of course, we are happy to oblige. Having a sound refund policy 鈥� and acting on it 鈥� is a good way to increase customer loyalty and good PR as we have discussed before. Also, as mentioned before, having a refund policy is mandatory. You can read some sample policies here to help craft your own.

However, while Indiana Jones movies are fun fantasies, believing that a refund on a credit card payment can be granted at any time after a purchase is more like a horror film so terrifying you can hardly bare to watch. Our clients on campus have been asked for refunds up to 27 months after a purchase has been made. That鈥檚 a long time even for those of us who remember seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in the movie theatre when it came out.

Why we don鈥檛 like bringing up ancient history

There is more than one reason that we do not allow for refunds over two years later. The first and most practical reason is that we physically cannot do so. We are limited to viewing 24 months of ecommerce transaction records in the clearing system we use, E-xact. As we need to be able to view a transaction in their system to be able to refund it, that means we cannot execute such refunds.

Searching for purchases are often conducted with vital pieces of information. For instance, the customer sends us the registrant鈥檚 name rather than the card holder, or the date is missing from the request. We can also only search in blocks of six months to search through 25 months of transactions could involve five searches.

In these situations, the user might then request we simply repay the fund by cheque. Web Services cannot do this. While an individual unit can go through the process, the credit card industry strongly advises against using this method It’s bad customer service as the card user expects a refund to be seamless. And of course when it comes to the good ol鈥� fashioned cheque, as Indiana Jones would say: 鈥淚t belongs in a museum!鈥�

Security is another reason we limit refunds. The credit card industry tells us that the longer the period of time available to request money back on a purchase, the more time malicious characters have to infiltrate a credit card holder鈥檚 account and request refunds 鈥� allowing them to then steal more money from the card.

Research also shows that if we state on a refund policy that we only accept refunds up to X days after a purchase we are saving time: customers don鈥檛 have to contact merchants on campus to ask, and merchants then don鈥檛 have to ask us in turn.

When we execute refunds it also causes mismatches in the accounts for an event. If it is an annual event we will redress that imbalance the following year, but if it is a one-off ITS Finance has to claw back money we have already paid out, a fear of ours which is akin to Dr. Jones鈥� phobia of snakes.

Finally, there is a presumed reasonable refund period. It is basic business operations to tell a customer they have 60-days to request a refund. That is the most the majority of businesses in Canada allow for. (You may allow for longer – see below.)

How to avoid refunding purchases older than Harrison Ford

For all these reasons we are suggesting you add the following text to add to your refund policies:

We allow refund requests up to 60 days after the date of purchase. We cannot make refunds after this time.

Note: You may have already covered this eventuality because you have set a refund policy which does not allow for refunds after an event begins (e.g., the first day of a conference).

On the other hand, you may wish to extend the 60 days to longer if you still want people to be able to withdraw from an event up until it begins. For example, you launch your registrations on May 1^st for a conference which begins on September 1^st. If you limit your refunds to 60 days that means by the end of June they can no longer request their money back. In this case it would be perfectly acceptable to set a refund policy for 120 days.

There you have it then: don鈥檛 make us break out the bull whip 鈥� please consider limiting your promises around refunds to a period of time that is both fair to your customers and manageable for you (and us).

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Just kidding 鈥� we still have nearly three more months of heat waves, gelato, and hopefully vacations until the Fall semester starts. Thankfully, because we have all earned the respite from -30 Celsius temperatures and +30 meter-high snow banks.

But in one sense September is already here: our clients across campus are already busy requesting that CU Ecommerce sites be created, updated, and reinflated, ready for events in September, October, and November 2023. This means that everything will be prepped and perfect for the launch of their marketing drives around these events and services.

If you are having an event between now and the start of December, all you need to do to request a new ecommerce site (or edits ahead of a relaunch of an existing site) is .

In Web Services, we are well aware that by writing this story we risk being accused of trying to create panic among those of you who have not yet requested a new or resurrected ecommerce website for your event/s. Just to be abundantly clear: we are trying to create panic. Not real panic 鈥� real panic is what we in Web Services experience when people come to us on 31st August requesting an ecommerce site that absolutely has to go live the day after Labour Day. But we are trying to encourage people to plan ahead. It means that there will be fewer delays for everyone, work will be completed with greater efficiency and accuracy, and departments employing CU Ecommerce will be able to take even more money via the service.

And if this post generates panic in your hearts, you 1) should probably , and 2) probably shouldn鈥檛 read our post scheduled for 30th June entitled It鈥檚 Christmas everyone!

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Around this time three years ago, most of us were packing up our office belongings and heading off to work from home for two weeks. (Oh how na茂ve we were!) At the same time, 杏吧原创 had to cancel all in-person events. This meant refunding 1500 people for those cancelled events which the university had taken payment for via CU Ecommerce.

Receiving a refund in that situation was automatic. It wasn’t our customers’ fault that we had to cancel those events. It didn’t matter that 杏吧原创 lost money – refunding the customers’ money was imperative, especially in the uncertain times of Spring 2020.

Cancellation Culture

Now as events on campus are going back to pre-COVID levels, it is good to remember that every event which charges for attendance, or every paid service or product sold via CU Ecommerce must have a refund policy, stipulating the conditions that enable a refund to be claimed, the time frames involved, the amount individuals can expect when requesting a refund and whether there are special situations (e.g., a provincial health mandate) that alter the policy.

What is the advantage of having a clear and prominent refund policy? According to UPS, customers pay very close attention to such policies with “64% reviewing the returns policy before they make a purchase online”. In other words, a lot of people will not make a purchase if they don’t think it is reversible.

We work closely with the Payment Card industry (PCI) to help our customers feel secure in their purchases. One action card users can take if they are unhappy is ask the payment card issuer to refund their money. (This is called a charge back.) If the card issuer decides the customer has a good case they will claw the money back from 杏吧原创 to give to the customer. This is expensive for us and if we are in this position too many times banks could stop allowing us to process their cards. Worst of all, it is bad public relations!

What does a typical refund policy look like?

We have a great example of what a refund policy can look like for events staged on campus. The Department of University Advancement boasts a nicely crafted policy, which you can . Why is this a good example?

• The page is entitled聽Refund Policy – rather than something like聽Cancellation Policy.
• A cancellation policy includes info about what you as an event host/service provider will do if you cancel an event and under such circumstances what your refund actions will be.
• Bear in mind you cannot imagine all the scenarios that might lead to cancellation. E.g., If you were planning an event to take place in April 2020, you would probably not have covered what happens the eventuality of a global pandemic breaking out.聽Cancellation also has a bit more of a negative ring to it
• The text lays out some different situations and scenarios and makes it clear what happens in each of these.
• It establishes timeframes for when a refund can take place and how long it might take to be processed.

It is important to cover all your bases and protect your event or service (for example, from failing to break even). At the same time, you must balance with this the maintenance of a good relationship with the community with which you are doing business.

With that in mind, you should aim for fairness and clarity while also putting the onus on the customer to seek out a refund from you.

What should go into a refund policy?

Your refund policy should include:

• general situations in which you will issue a refund
• if and how this may vary over time leading up to an event
• whether a refund will be full or partial
• what are the timelines involved in

You should list the circumstances under which a refund will be given (or not given). For example, it may be that a student who pays for a field trip via CU Ecommerce must withdraw from the course in order to qualify for a refund. It may be tied to serious illness or bereavement, but remember you would have to have a way to check for this. If you make providing evidence a stipulation, then things could get very weird, very fast.

The cheque’s in the mail

However, most refunds depend on time as the main criterion. Here you have a big range of options. You might insist no refunds will be given to those requesting them within the five days leading up to an event. You can also decide to make the refund policy more lenient the more notice is given. For example, you could have a policy that states there will be a 100% refund if it is requested up to 30 days before an event, with a 50% refund if it is requested within 30 days of the event. Alternatively, you can say there will be a refund but with a 10% administrative fee.

You can make the same kinds of refund promise, but not linked to any time framework – for example, cancel at any time and receive a 75% refund.

Note: When we say The cheque is in the mail we don’t mean literally. We only refund via the card used to pay in the first place. According the banks this is just good customer service – it is what the customer expects and is theoretically not giving them extra work to do (for example, going to the bank to pay in a cheque).

Friend or Foe

It is around this kind of decision that you have to strike a balance. You must be fair to your event and its stakeholders, but also fair to the customer. They may have a very legitimate reason to withdraw from an event. Another way to look at it is your event’s solvency versus the need to maintain good PR for your department and the University as a whole.

In terms of timelines, ITS Finance generally executes people with refunds within five days of receipt of the request. Once that step is taken we can confirm a refund will be coming their way. However, after this point the question of how long a refund takes is out of the hands of anyone at 杏吧原创 – it is down to the payment card issuer. It can take 30 days to appear on someone’s credit card account.

If you don’t have a refund policy at home, shop-bought is fine

To make things easier we have prepared a choice of policies you can adapt to your own use. If you would like to employ any of these, you can copy the text, edit it to match your event, and paste this into a request to the ITS Service Desk. In the request simply ask that it be used as the refund policy page on your ecommerce site. Don’t forget to include the URL of your ecommerce site.

If you have any questions or simply want to add a mandatory refund policy please .

The post Putting the ‘fun’ back into ‘Refund and Cancellation Policies for ecommerce’ appeared first on Web Services.

This Spring marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of CU Ecommerce. This is the service that allows units on campus to take money for events and services without having to resort to finding their own third-party provider.

The CU Ecommerce was built by our senior web developer, Mike Corkum, back at the end of 2012. After a few pilot projects, the service went live in the Spring of 2013. We had one client to start with (appropriately enough it was the ). Since then we have helped 150 clients. As we speak we have 85 clients and the system has transacted nearly $15 million.

None of this could have been possible without the collaboration of those clients on campus who not only needed an ecommerce service but who worked with us to push its boundaries and functions to build a much more complex set of functionalities than we started with all that time ago. It seems unreal that it could be ten years ago, when it feels like ten minutes.

Speaking of ten minutes, that is not the amount of lead time you need to give us if you would like an ecommerce site set up for you. Our official lead time is 4 weeks, although we can spin things up faster than that if required. But once you have submitted a form to request the CU Ecommerce service, we cannot simply press a button to make things happen. The steps that follow include:

• we have to meet to hear about your requirements
• and you have to hear about the service to see if it fits the bill for you
• we need to outline the price associated with operating an ecommerce instance at 杏吧原创
• you need to provide the fields for your form(s)
• in addition, you need to provide text for the page the form sits on as well as the email notifications sent to your customers and
• text for the refunds page which is an absolutely mandatory requirement

Even after the forms and pages are built, there is still testing and bug-fixing to go through. You can see why asking for an ecommerce event the day before you want to start advertising it to the world. Thankfully we now have an ecommerce checklist for you when you want to request the service.

We will be talking about refund policies in a fresh news story very soon to help outline your own. However, you still need to provide this to us before your ecommerce page goes live. If you don’t we will decide the refund policy for you, and believe me, we are way more generous with your money than we are with our own.

If you would like to engage Web Services around ecommerce you can consult the Ecommerce Checklist to get started. And remember: is the way to request the service.

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One clear indication that we are bouncing back from the unprecedented times of 2020-21 is that CU Ecommerce is as busy as ever. Units across campus are organizing new events 鈥� everyone from Learning in Retirement to Ravens to conferences of all kinds. Some of these are even in person 鈥� imagine! (And of course, these are made as safe as possible thanks to 杏吧原创鈥檚 rigorous health and safety protocols.)

Of course, things change and sometimes events are cancelled or individuals are compelled to cancel their attendance. In the event you wish to issue one of your customers with a refund, you can in order to request this.

The crucial items of information are the cardholder鈥檚 name, the reference number of their purchase, and of course, how much of a refund you wish to issue. We made this latter part easy by giving you the option to select Full refund or to enter an amount of your choosing for a partial refund.

Occasionally, a whole event is cancelled and the number of refunds is sizeable. ITS is limited in the number of resources it can dedicate to this task so please bear in mind it can take a while for refunds to be requested by us, and even longer for the credit card company to then act on our request. If you have a set of refunds that exceeds fifteen or so customers you can create a spreadsheet of the customer details with all the information for each that is requested on the form:

• Credit Card Holder’s Name
• Reference number of purchase (This is the 16 to 18 character, alpha-numeric reference number which appears on all your customer’s receipts as聽 Ref.)
• Date of purchase (DD/MM/YYYY)
• Amount of Refund (in C$ including taxes if any were included)

This can be sent to the ITS Service Desk via the . In the request you make you should include the name of the event/ecommerce project and the name of the department.

Now is also a great time to revisit your cancellation/refund policy. (For some of you now would be a great time to create your first-ever cancellation/policy.) Need to see an example of a well designed and written refund policy? You can take a look at the Department of University Advancement鈥檚 refund policy for inspiration. Remember that as well as the other reasons for offering refunds, nowadays people want the reassurance that if they exhibit any signs or feel any symptoms of COVID-19 they can cancel with confidence.

As we say, it鈥檚 great that so many events are being brought back this year such as in-person Ravens games (!), while some great 杏吧原创 offerings never went away 鈥� they just went online, like Learning in Retirement. We are looking forward to helping more and more events either go back to in-person or transition temporarily online!

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As we have mentioned before, the CU Ecommerce Service has gone from strength to strength over the years. Starting with two clients (Thank you Sprott School of Business and the Department of University Advancement!) eight years ago, the service has now over 100 clients, has helped organize over 70 conferences, and has saved thousands of people-hours in work, headaches and frustration for those on campus who have to allow for paid registrations and the sales of services and goods online.

As the beneficiaries of our own success we have decided it is time to streamline a service that started small and now has the potential to take over the working day of more than one team member in ITS.

Moving forward therefore, we will be asking that you follow some alternative processes to request the service, payouts and refunds around ecommerce events. Here are some of the exciting developments:

• if you wish to request a new ecommerce event please complete the new engagement form.
• if you require a refund please complete the refunds form.
• if you need the disbursement of your funds please complete the disbursement form.
• if you need to request technical support for an ecommerce form please complete the support form.

Speaking of disbursement of funds, we have adopted a couple of new accounting practices in order to ensure everyone gets set up initially and then receives their money as quickly as possible. New practices include:

• if you request an ecommerce event, you will be asked to agree to new terms of conditions
• when requesting refunds we will require full information, for example, you must provide the reference number of the transaction and the聽full amount required for refund (i.e., you cannot request a 50% refund – you just tell us in dollars and cents)
• at the same time you must聽include the HST in the amount of the refund – so if the price was $100 plus HST then you must request $113 as the refund

We are excited to streamline everything and create a more efficient system for you to take money online for your great events and services.

The post Changes to Ecommerce appeared first on Web Services.

If you have had to cancel an event that has been set up through our E-Commerce solution, please follow the steps below. For individual refunds, please use the usual form found here.

Request Refunds for a Cancelled Event that Uses 杏吧原创 E-Commerce

1. Download a list of registrations:

• How to download a csv file
• If you need our help downloading the list, please send us an email with a link to the event.

2. Send a refund request to ITS Finance: ITS.Finance@cunet.carleton.ca

Please include:

• The event name
• A link to the event
• The list of registrations

Note: For individual refunds, please use the form found here.

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Great news everyone – Your ecommerce pages are becoming even more secure!

As you know, Web Services in ITS offers the CU Ecommerce Service to those of you on campus who need to take money for events and services. We are pleased to announce that in September we transacted our 10,000,000th dollar! We are pleased with how this service has grown 鈥� a growth which is driven by the ideas and enthusiasm of our clients on campus. The whole service is a team effort and wouldn鈥檛 exist without the help of the Business Office and the finance and security experts in ITS.

Speaking of security, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) creates a list of stipulations to help insure credit and debit cards are not used fraudulently, and we try to comply as closely as possible. For example, we don鈥檛 collect credit card numbers ourselves at 杏吧原创 鈥� we farm that out to a third-party, secure gateway (the company is called E-xact). They specialise in just taking credit card numbers, encrypting them, and sending them to the clearing bank for verification. When the bank verifies that they can clear the payment on this card, E-xact then sends a message back to our web servers to tell us the payment has been successful. All this happens in less than a second!

One of the pieces of information we send to E-xact is the Card Verification Value (CVV). That is the code on the back of your credit card, which is usually just three-digits. In Web Services we have always made this a mandatory field. Other ways of checking that the card is being used by the right person are less satisfactory. For instance, if we asked people for their address as a way to double check there are some disadvantages. People have to know their exact address for E-xact 鈥� if they type St. instead of Street then the transaction can fail. If we ask for their address this might double the length of the form they have to fill out which lowers the conversion rate of interested customers > actual completed purchases. Addresses are also quite easy to find out by other people.

So instead we verify the credit card鈥檚 CVV number. In Web Services we have always made the CVV mandatory on purchases. People have to fill that in in order to attempt to make a purchase. The University has decided to make this mandatory on ALL E-xact account across campus, not just Web Services. That is good news! As we have to switch on the mandatory status on each and every ecommerce event we create, and with the news this is going to be the same for everyone on campus, we are going to take the added measure of going back through every live ecommerce instance at the moment and check that the CVV is a mandatory requirement on each and every one of them.

One interesting aspect of the CVV number is that when it is checked by the bank and found to be incorrect, the bank doesn鈥檛 block the transaction! Instead the bank sends that nugget of information back to us and lets us decide whether we want to run the risk that this is a fraudulent use of a card or simply someone keying in their CVV incorrectly. In other words, to gamble on taking a fraudulent payment over losing a sale. Obviously, we are not interested in taking any fraudulent payment attempts so we have instituted a filter that declines any payment that comes from a card where there is a CVV mismatch 鈥� where the number on the card doesn鈥檛 match what the customer said it was. We might lose a few sales, but it is better than allowing malevolent forces from using a credit card illicitly.

All these things are just a part of the great work the ITS Security Department and the Business Office do in advising us on how to make our payment system more secure.

If you want to know more or wish to engage with us about the CU Ecommerce Service, you can learn more about it on our website, or complete this form.

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