Waitlist: You are in line in case the item you wants becomes available.

The order of this waitlist is determined by when your claim/comment is registered by the system.

This does not guarentee you an item.

You will get a notification/email/message if the item becomes available.

After it comes into your cart. You will have 8 hours to check out or it will go to the next person.

The following short video covers the following:

• difference between waitlist and preauthorization
• why preauthorizations work
• how to preauthorize an item on a browser and the app.

You can watch the video here.

Preauthorization: you have preauthorized the charging of your card should the item you want become available.

The order of this list is determined by the time you chose to preauthorize.

This is NOT a preorder.

This does not guarantee you any item.

This will charge your card without notifying you first.

The following short video covers the following:

• difference between waitlist and preauthorization
• why preauthorizations work
• how to preauthorize an item on a browser and the app.

You can watch the video here.

Preorder: This is an item on sale that has a later ship date.

These are normally only done through our website erinlanebags.com and are RARELY on a live sale.

Hankmas is considered a preorder and is done live. You can see our preorder policies here.

You can shop a live sale either on a social platform like Facebook or Instagram, or on our free App.

It is personal preference, and we will always broadcast to both socials and the app.

You can download our app on either Apple or Android here.

On a browser: Go to erinlanebags.commentsold.com and click the big BLUE button to log in with Facebook.

Click the big PINK button to log in with Instagram.

On the App: Click the blue button that says FACEBOOK and then log into your Facebook when prompted.

You have to tell Facebook or Instagram that it is okay for our program, CommentSold, to read your comments.

That is all it will do. It does not have access to anything else, and this only allows the program to see you comment and register those comments in the system when you want to purchase something.

On a browser: You would type the word "sold" and then the key word that appears on your screen over my head.

On the app: you would click the little photo in the upper right hand corner that says "Buy".

Then something pops up from the bottom of your screen. You would then click "Add to Cart."

You can watch a quick video on how the process works here.

That means you are in line in case someone who has the item decides to pass on it.

The order of the waitlist is determined by the program (CommentSold) based on when your comment/claim was registered to the server. (This is down to the hundredth of a second sometimes.)

If the item becomes available, you will receive an email/notification/message and have 8 hours to decide if you want the item or if you want to pass.

After that 8 hour timer runs out, the item will automatically move to the next person on the waitlist.

Preauthorizing an item does not guarantee you the item. It simply moves you to the front or closer to the front of the waitlist line.

Preauthorizing is the best way to get something that is on your waitlist, but if the people originally carted the item decide to check out with that item, it will never go to anyone on the waitlist or preauthorization list.

ABSOLUTELY!

After the live part is over, we post all the items to our app and on what we call the "list".

In a browser: Go to erinlanebags.commentsold.com and click the big blue or pink button. Then scroll down until you see "SHOP."

There you can see all the items we had live and add them to your cart, to your waitlist, or preauthorize them.

In the app: Just open your app and you can click the live replay at the top of your screen.

Once in the replay, click "SHOP ALL" at the bottom of your screen.

Here you can see everything we had on the live. You can add to cart, to your waitlist, or preauthorize. And by clicking on the item, it will jump to that part of the live, so you can see the full bag!

You sure can. CommentSold is connected to our Shopify site. That means that it can read the coupon codes you get from loyalty purchases.

However, you have to get your code on the erinlanebags.com website and then copy paste it into the coupon code section.

We do ask that no coupons are used during Hankmas. It is fine to use them all other times, but that is the one event a year we ask you to not use a coupon.

PLEASE NOTE: Coupon codes DO NOT work on preauthorizations. This is a limitation of preauthorizations, and we have no control over that.

Furthermore, it can take the systems a few minutes to communicate, so you might have to refresh your checkout page a couple of times to get the coupon to work.

If you are having issues with a coupon code, please feel free to contact us.

We have an awesome rewards program here! It's our way of saying thank you for your choice to support a small handmade business.

To earn rewards you need to go and create an account here at erinlanebags.com by clicking the little, green present at the bottom right of the screen. Click log in (if you have an account here already) or click create account and follow the prompts.

It's that easy. Once you have an account, all purchases made tied to that email address will earn rewards.

PLEASE NOTE: If the email address you use on erinlanebags.com and the one tied to your Facebook account are NOT THE SAME ADDRESS, you might have two rewards accounts.

It is HIGHLY recommended that you use the same email address for both accounts so you can maximize your rewards.

If you have any questions about possibly having two accounts or not receiving rewards, please feel free to contact us.

Each item you cart has its own timer.

If you add something at 8:30 and something else at 10:14, they will expire at different times.

So you have 18 hours on EACH ITEM.

The 18 hour timer only applies to items that were claimed/carted NOT FROM A WAITLIST.

If you have an item come off the waitlist into your cart, you have 8 hours to decide if you want the item or not.

If you check out, the item is yours. If you do not check out in that amount of time, then the item expires and moves to the next person in line.

Once a waitlist item has exited your cart, we cannot do anything to give you another chance at it. Unless everyone else passes, and the item goes back "in stock."

Items that are preauthorized are IMMEDIATELY CHARGED when they become available, so there is not a timer to be concerned with like on a waitlist or regular cart item.

However, any item that is preauthorized only stays preauthorized for 90 days. After that, it is just a waitlist item.

This is because after 90 days I know I would not remember preapproving something and would freak out when I saw the charge. So I figure the same is true for most people.

We offer free shipping for 24 hours between checkouts. Because waitlists move so much and so quickly, we want you to be able to shop without penalty.

What that means is if you check out (you get an order confirmation, not just put something in your cart) at 10:12 AM, you have until 10:12 AM the FOLLOWING day to check out again without incurring an additional shipping fee.

However, it DOES daisy chain, so you can check out at 10:12 and again at 3:18 and the new 24 hour timer will expire at 3:18.

Essentially, you could pay one shipping charge for an entire live sale. And yes, it does happen, quite a bit.

ABSOLUTELY NOT! I have never sold out a live sale. Though I would super love that. It has literally never happened.

Here's the truth, at the end of the actual live, where I sign off, yes, it looks like everything is claimed.

By the time I get home about 30 minutes later, there are items that have no waitlists and are ready for purchase right away.

Waitlists work. Preauthorizations work. But we always end up with a significant number of items that are on the website about a week after the live event.

I know that it can be frustrating to be on a waitlist. However, if this was a website update, there is no cart hold, meaning someone could just cart jack you and the same problem occurs, but with no hope of being notified if the item becomes available. This is one of the main reasons we do live sales.

Please note that there are loads of times when something with 50+ people on a waitlist just ends up sitting on the website. Does that always happen, no. But it does happen more than you think.

We have listened to our customers, and that is why we have changed our waitlist time to 8 hours. People were "cart camping" where they would have tons of things in their carts and you would think they were sold out.

They weren't someone just didn't release them in a timely manner.

To combat this, we are moving waitlist times to 8 hours.

We wait for movement on waitlists to slow down and then we combine all the orders going to the same person and ship them out!

This normally takes about a week. So we begin packing the Friday after a live event, and in most cases the packages are picked up on the following Monday from our studio.

I wish I had a crystal ball that could tell me what that was going to be!

Truth is we don't always know what will be a break out hit fabric wise or which bag will be the most popular that live or that season.

While I am a pretty good guesser, there is no formula for what will be the thing everyone rushes to.

I guess wrong a lot, so I just have to do my best and make more of what I *think* will be the most popular.

I have done this several times with very little success.

It seems that when a live sale ends, that is the last most people think of it. And by the time I get more fabric and make up the item, people just pass and I am left with a bunch of inventory that no one really wants.

In the world of yarn, so many people use this model to great success.

However, when dealing with fabric and not yarn, things get a little different.

For a yarn dyer, they know they have X number of skeins. That means they can dye any color on those skeins.

That's not how fabric works, much to my chagrin. Because 100 yards of fabric could be 100 one yard fabrics or any combination of fabric prints to that 100 yards.

We design every fabric you see in our shop (with a few limited exceptions). That means we have to have our fabric printed. The lead time on getting custom fabric printed and delivered is on average 30 days. (But a few times it has taken more like 45.)

So if we do a preorder, you have ordered and paid for product that I then have to order fabric for, and wait for it to come in and then process into bags. That process is at least another 30+ days. Most people do not like waiting 60+ days for their bags or really any preorder.

If I buy the fabric and then offer the items for preorder, there is an inventory issue. I still have to decide in this case how many of each thing to make so that I don't run out of fabric.

And then what happens if I guess wrong? What if I allotted for too many project bags and not enough totes? I can't just say, "Well, I will move this fabric from product A to product B. No big deal." Because the reality is that no two products are the same length requirement to do that. Every product is it's own unique snowflake of fabric needs.

(File that under things I wish I knew when I started.)

So that leaves me with having to make the decision on how many of each thing to make no matter what. And it is easier on the customer side to say, "I like that" and have it shipped out quickly than it is to wait.

So, if I already have to decide how many of each product to make, I might as well make it up and take the waiting out of the equation for you.

We love the idea of a shorter live sale; however, that would mean we have less time to make items up.

Production sewing is an assembly line. I might set zippers on 5 different products for two days, and then move those items into next steps, but setting all the zippers at once, is the best way to do that.

The only way to make the number of things we produce is to sew this way, and that means we generally end up with everything getting finished in just a matter of two to three days of each other, so that means one long live sale at the end of the month.

That is totally fine. We know that this way of shopping isn't for everyone. This is just what we have found is best for our business.

That said, items from every live sale are posted to our website.

After we get everything shipped out after the live event, we post all the items in a collection on our website. So you don't have to shop live, have an app, or do anything other than browse at your convenience.

Obviously, some items sell out and are not available on the website after a live, but that does not mean that there is nothing left. We have LOTS of bags from LOTS of live sales hanging out on the website all the time.