Does listing physical product as “downloadable” break any rules?

  • Resolved philiclese

    (@philiclese)


    2 years, 10 months ago

    Also posted on Reddit.

    It is a “customer designs” T Shirt store. Looks like he hard coded in shipping costs, perhaps because he has all products as “downloadable” so no shipping cost setting appears. I think he did that as a shortcut to link a PDF of shirt design to email receipt. So:

    Is that breaking some rule, listing a real product as downloadable, perhaps in that payment is freed up to us immediately despite product not shipped yet? We will ship with a day or two. Will Stripe or Visa/MC etc ever catch something like that?

    On the product page where he checked off downloadable, that seems to be a subcategory of “Simple” product which seems to be defined as a product that “can be shipped” so how can it be both shippable and downloadable? Yet they give that options.

    Here is screenshot of both the setting, and the Woo help page:`

    View post on imgur.com

    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Mirko P.

    (@rainfallnixfig)

    Hi @philiclese,

    A “Simple Product” type not necessarily needs to be shipped. If it’s a “Virtual” Simple Product then it doesn’t need to be shipped and the shipping tab will be hidden. A Simple Product type can also be a “Downloadable Product”.

    Generally, for physical products that can be shipped, you’d want to uncheck both Virtual and Downloadable.

    Downloadable should be checked only for digital files. The shipping tab remains when Downloadable is checked so that it could be used for those products that need shipping as well (e.g. a CD that can be downloaded but also physically shipped to the customer).

    If you’d like to disable shipping altogether for downloadable products, here is a tutorial that you can follow.

    Let us know if you have more questions.

    Thread Starter philiclese

    (@philiclese)

    Thank you for the info and tutorial link.

    But I still have the question of whether it breaks any rules with maybe Stripe or the Credit card companies to have it listed as downloadable, since that PDF they are getting is really just part of receipt, and the actual product is physically mailed? Or do they likely not care, or would never even notice?

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by philiclese.
    Mirko P.

    (@rainfallnixfig)

    Hi @philiclese,

    Listing a product as downloadable is perfectly legitimate and I’m not sure payment processors have anything to do with this. However, it’s a good idea to test the site in a staging environment first. Some hosts offer Staging sites facilities, but if you don’t have such a feature, you can create one with the WP Staging plugin.

    Cheers.

    Thread Starter philiclese

    (@philiclese)

    Ok, thanks again!

    Thread Starter philiclese

    (@philiclese)

    Replying to mark as solved.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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