Need discussion on how to handle BiNs, auctions and lotteries on HCM

Hi everyone,

I’d like to have a discussion regarding how to handle BiNs, auctions and lotteries on HCM. Currently, the way it’s set up, when a customer wins a BiN, auction or lottery, their information is recorded in the ‘buyer’ field on the product listing, but an order is not created until the customer goes through the entire checkout process with the item. I designed it this way so that, in the spirit of HC Multi, the customer could place additional items in her cart and then check out with everything all at once.

This setup has some disadvantages though: 1) it is a bit confusing for the buyers and sellers, who don’t understand why the BiN / auction / lottery has ended but no order is showing up in the order history; 2) the seller is not able to flag buyers if they don’t go through the checkout process and create the order.

That leaves a couple of choices:

1. Leave the setup as-is, but add the capability for the seller to flag the buyer from the product listing page (i.e. in the column where it says ‘buyer’, you would be able to click on the buyer’s email address and flag from there).
2. Change the setup so that the order is created as soon as the BiN button is clicked or the auction / lottery ends. This means that if the buyer did want to purchase other things from your store, she would need to fill up a separate cart and check out in a separate order.
3. Change the setup as above, but also include the capability of combining orders. This would be the most complicated option, of course, and would a) take longer to code, b) still be potentially confusing for customers.

If we went with option 2 or 3, I could probably also add the capability of allowing qty’s greater than 1 on the BiN listings.

Or, if anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to chime in.

I’m taking a poll and encouraging discussion on this thread.

Thanks!