Magento

Hi,

First off kudos to the folks at Varien for the great work thus far. A question about the Roadmap for Magento…

I was wondering if the features listed on the roadmap at http://www.magentocommerce.com/roadmap has functionality in the order from top to bottom in which they are going to be built? In particular I am excited to get Gift Certificates working in Magento. In particular:

- ability to purchase a GC, and send a redemption code to a recipient
- redemption of the GC during checkout
- remaining credit of GC to be maintained
- ability ot check GC value

Thanks for any info you can give!

-s

@stefan66 - Thanks for the kinds word. Unfortunately, we do not publish the dates or order of development.

The features will be released as soon as they are ready

Hello,

In a slightly similar vein, is it possible to create products in Magento that have user-specified prices?  This is similar to a gift certificate feature in that users can specify the amount of the certificate.

Thanks,
Josh

Hello,

First, I would also like to commend Roy and the entire Varien team on a job well done so far. I was also wondering what the roadmap for gift certificates is, are the feature even in development yet?  However, more important to me right now is in the same vein as jnankin’s comment. I am trying to build a online pressence for my retail store, we do allot of gift certificate sales in weird denominations. I am therefore looking for a way to have user defined prices. Is there a way to do this that I do not know about, is it a feature that is coming as well or has some built a module to do this type of transaction already?

--
steve

I, too, am in need of a gift certificate feature.  If anyone has discovered a way to do this now (some way to use a current feature for that purpose) or if someone has a module, I would appreciate knowing about it.

The Gift Certificate feature has become one of the decision points for selecting a shopping cart for the project.

Thanks for anything you can share.

I too am interested in that kind of developpement.

Regards,
A.

I would also like to see a Gift Certificate feature, hopefully sooner than later, as I am having problems with Zen Cart and would like to change over to Magento as soon as possible.

Otherwise, I am really liking this project. Keep up the good work!

P

Nice idea, like the way you put in into practice.

Anyone have news on possible availability of this from Varien or third party in time for the holidays? If we know for sure they are not doing this, then will start development right away. If there is a chance they are working on it already then will just hold off so as not to duplicate effort. A little feedback on this from the magento crew would be great.

Thanks@!

I also need this feature as soon as possihble!

Anyone at Varien want to share some info before we duplicate efforts that could be better spent on improving another aspect of the cart?

A

Our business model is completely based on selling gift certificates. We would like to know is it already in the development or in the initial stage. We like to have multiple denominations for the same certificate as well. So, we don’t have to list the product multiple times for different denominations.

The easiest way to implement this would be to just plain sell give certificates, and after purchase, you can e-mail them a “gift code” for them to use during checkout.

iiNTENSE - 16 November 2008 02:03 PM

The easiest way to implement this would be to just plain sell give certificates, and after purchase, you can e-mail them a “gift code” for them to use during checkout.

Among the several stores I have seen selling “Gift Certificates,” this seems to be exactly how they are doing it. I suppose all one needs do is set up the respective Gift Certificate value with a specific code - and then, when the customer goes to redeem the certificate, they enter the code. 

The question then becomes, however . . .  how does one assure that the code is not passed around to all of the buyer’s friends and they use it to?  Is there a way to set up a “one time use” special discount code?

You set set a value that defines, how many times a code can be used. So that should be pretty simple

Xcart does a good job with how Gift Certificates function, but contrary to how some have posted, it’s not really as easy as it sounds to implement Gift Certificates. Gift Certs break the mold of the typical product and payment. For example:

1. Gift Certificates (GC) are not only payments but products. Purchasing a payment?
2. GC can have user input price amounts. Name your own price on a product?
3. GC need to have unique, but unguessable codes. MD5 anyone?
4. GC need to be tracked for usage, don’t want a customer passing around a code that can deprive you of your hard earned cash.
5. Can a customer use part of the GC now and part later?
6. Can a customer use more than one GC during checkout?
7. Do we email or mail GC to the customer?
8. Do GC expire?
9. You need to approve purchased GC so that someone can’t buy a GC on a stolen CC and then use the GC right away.

These are just a few to get started. I’d love to code this myself, but I’m not sure if Magento can handle multiple payments during checkout, this would be required to use a GC for the order, then a CC for the remaining amount.

For those interested, there is some code in the Magento trunk for a Giftcert module that was created back in July, but doesn’t look like it’s seen much development since then. It’s pretty basic and doesn’t do anything that I can tell.

Oh and BTW. I’ll be switching to Magento from Xcart as soon as a GC solution is available.