Version of Sept. 26, 2026
The second most common email at the desk is a customer looking at a bank statement, so this page is about what the charge is, when it lands and what to do when a line looks wrong.
Paying with PayPal, or with my Discover card
The checkout has two options: the card fields, which take Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover, debit or credit; and the PayPal button. Those two are the whole list, and the checkout shows the same two and nothing else. Apple Pay and Google Pay aren’t offered. Should that change, this page and the checkout change together.
A charge showed up straight away
Correct. Payment is taken once, in full, the instant the order goes through, whether by card or by PayPal. Nothing is charged at send-out and nothing later. Cancel inside the 8-hour window and every cent is back inside 3 weekdays.
A pending amount, but no order
When a payment dies at the final step, the card issuer may keep an authorization parked on the account for as long as 5 weekdays. It’s a hold by the issuing bank, not a charge, and it clears by itself. No order stands behind it. A confirmation email is the only sign an order exists; if there’s none, the order can be placed again.
The whole price before I press pay
Checkout total = books + delivery + tax where it applies.
- Books, after any discount.
- Delivery: $4.90 when the books come to less than $49.00, otherwise $0.00. Shown before the payment button.
- Tax: a line only where the delivery address requires one.
No handling charge, card charge, service charge or insurance, and nothing optional pre-ticked. Worked case: two paperbacks at $12.99 and $9.99 to an address with no sales tax. Delivery $4.90. Checkout total $27.88. Card charged $27.88.
A tax line I wasn’t expecting
Site prices leave tax out. Where the customer’s state requires tax on the delivery address, a tax line appears above the payment button and sits inside the total being approved. Where the state doesn’t, there’s no line.
Paying from a bank outside the US
Dollars, United States dollars, are the only currency the shop quotes, charges or refunds in. A card issued abroad is still charged in dollars. The issuing bank picks the exchange rate, and if it adds a foreign transaction fee, that fee never reaches the shop and can’t be refunded from here. The delivery address itself still has to be in the lower 48 or DC.
Typing my card number into a small shop’s website
Those card fields are the payment processor’s, embedded in the page. Whatever’s typed there travels encrypted to the processor and skips the shop’s servers altogether. What the desk can see amounts to the card’s brand plus its final four digits. Cards run on Stripe; PayPal payments run on PayPal; both hold PCI DSS certification. The browser padlock is on every checkout page. No card number is stored here, so none can leak from here.
My billing address isn’t my delivery address
Allowed. A gift to a nephew in another state is the everyday case. The billing address must match what the card issuer has on file, or the issuer declines. The delivery address only needs to be inside the delivery area.
You’ve asked me to verify my order
A few orders are held by the processor’s fraud screen before packing. If the desk needs anything, it emails inside 1 weekday. An order that can’t be verified inside 5 weekdays is cancelled and refunded in full. The desk never asks for a full card number by email.
Declined, and I don’t know why
Declines come from the issuing bank. The desk can’t see the reason and can’t override it. Three usual suspects: a billing address the bank doesn’t recognize, a digit typed wrong, a spending cap for the day. Correct the details and retry, or use PayPal.
That price looked like a mistake
A price that’s plainly a typo (a $22.99 hardcover showing $2.29) is corrected before anything ships. An email from the desk gives the true price and a choice: top up the difference, or cancel and have it all back. Until the customer answers in writing, the order sits still.
A chargeback is crossing my mind
Email the desk first. A bank dispute runs 30-90 days and freezes the order while it runs. An email gets an answer inside 1 weekday and, where money is owed, the refund inside 7 weekdays. A dispute filed without a word to the desk is met with the order record, the tracking log and the email trail.
A coupon code I’d like to use
None are live. The code box at checkout is part of the shop software and changes nothing. Should the shop ever issue one, its rules land on this page before the code goes live.
Paying by check, or when it arrives
Not available: personal checks, money orders, bank transfers, cash on delivery, cryptocurrency, gift cards, store credit, pay-later plans. An order exists only after a card or PayPal payment clears at checkout.
What you keep about my payment
On the order record sit a name, two addresses, the titles, the amount, whether it was card or PayPal, and four digits of the card. What Stripe and PayPal keep is covered in the Privacy Policy.
Where to go from here
Refund and Returns Policy for how money comes back. Shipping Policy for the $4.90 and the $49.00 line. Contact for the form and the company details. Or email contact@ovexik.com, or ring +1 (770) 768-1723 on a weekday between 8:00 AM and 4:30 PM ET. Someone who read the message writes back inside one business day.