We recently had a WooCommerce Support customer ask how they can add an additional item to one of their customers’ orders through their WooCommerce store. The original order had already been placed and payment was taken. The customer then called and asked for an additional item to be added. The issues our customer was trying to solve were:
- How to charge their customer for the additional item and
- How to avoid a second shipping charge if they placed it themselves.
We haven’t come across this request so we did little digging. The two questions I wanted to answer were:
- Was this even possible?
- If it were possible, is it the right thing to do?
Is it possible to add an item to an existing order and charge the customer for the new item?
If there was an extension available to solve such a problem, the first place I look is on WooCommerce.com. Searching the store turned up zilch, even with a few different search queries.
A quick Gooogle search returned results for manually managing orders. And programmatically inserting items into orders, this specific problem does not seem to be addressed.
As a final hail mary, I started a chat with a WooCommerce.com support rep and asked them if they thought it was possible. Here’s the meat of that conversation:
The best option would just be for the customer to place a new order and then you will need to update any combined shipping information for them. Or just ship two orders. It’s not possible to update an order that is already paid for like this without a lot of trouble. In the end, these are the best options to continue.
Is it ethical to add an item to an order in this way?
My original thought was that even if it were possible to manage an order in this way, would it be the right way thing to do? Charging a customer’s credit card without them actually clicking the button or giving explicit permission is not the way to build trust with customers, and may even run into legal issues. And since WooCommerce support agrees with that assessment, we have our answer:
Is it possible to add an item to a WooCommerce order – and charge the extra? No, it is not.
The right thing to do is have them order again and work out a refund on shipping later.
4 Comments
Wondering if there’s any update on this now in 2021…I need an “Add To Order” option at checkout on my store asap… I know similar webstores as mine have this option. Customers can select this option at checkout and there’s a fixed fee to pay (plus the item’s price). So they avoid paying full price for shipping a second time and it would be so easy for us logistically…
Thanks,
Bruno
Hi Bruno, your request sounds a bit different that what we mentioned in this article… It sounds like you need a ‘keep shopping’ notice on the checkout? If so that should be relatively straight forward to add. Start a chat with us and I can explain further, or send us an email at support@cinchws.com
Hi Bryan probably I misunderstanding the use case as I don’t see any mis-conduct. Let’s say my client made and paid the order. As you said in your article, it calls to add an extra product. I update the existing order and send the updated order’s url to the client for paying (either by card or bank transfer).
Why is shouldn’t be possible? What I’m missing is that when I update the order adding the extra, the link show the whole new order total to be paid, while there should be the extra only. If I also update the main product to $0 there would be like a discount for the main product but that is just wrong.
That’s an interesting approach Paul but as you mentioned it misses the main point – adding more products to an existing, paid for order. Since the order is complete, there’s no built in way to re-open the order. And after all these years it seems the KISS principle still applies here. Just create a new order and adjust the shipping costs. Simple and straight forward.