For years, we offered customers the Paypal Express payment method. payment method. This was also used with pleasure.
Unfortunately, we were never aware of the disadvantages...

Paypal Express means that customers can access the Paypal Express on the item page, click on the Paypal Express button. Then then they are immediately forwarded to Paypal.
There they pay and thus the purchase process is completed.

This sounds good and convenient at first. But it has massive disadvantages for both sides:

1. In the online shop, a full customer account is no longer created. created. Customers can therefore no longer log in and e.g. check their order history of the last few years.
2. Customer tracking is no longer possible, as there is no fully possible, as there is no full customer account.
3. The customers can therefore also no longer make any subsequent corrections corrections, e.g. if mistakes have been made with the delivery address. were made.

We became aware of the problem in the first place because time and again customers who could not log in to their accounts or who were account or were asked to create a new account the next time they to create a new account. So they didn't even know that they only had a useless "guest account" and not a real one.

Many customers don't like to leave a customer account in every shop, for in every shop, e.g. because they are afraid of advertising emails.
But on the one hand, we generally do not send advertising by email or post!
And newsletters with interesting scientific information or lucrative discount offers will only be sent to customers who have double opt-in procedure.
And on the other hand, and very few customers know this: That with the "Ordering without a customer account" is a big fallacy!
Every online shop has to set up a customer account, after all, it has to store the order data and also in case there are problems, problems, e.g. because a customer does not receive a parcel, he must be able to access the data to access the data even months later.
There is even a legal obligation to keep this data for a while! for a while!

In this respect, the "order without a customer account" is pure window dressing. eyewash...
Every shop software, whether Magento or Shopware and certainly those of Amazon and Ebay create such a "quick order account" first. "Quick order account", which for the customer actually only has the only the purpose of pretending to be data protection and pointless. With all data is stored for a long time and, what is even more important for the customer and what is even more important for the customer, they can no longer delete or or change them, because they are no longer accessible for the "guest account" because they cannot log in! for the "guest account"!
And it gets even better: when buying via Paypal Express, the shop creates such a "quick order account" every time! If you ordered 10 times in 5 years, you will have 10 disfunctional customer accounts disfunctional customer accounts with always a new customer number, with which neither you nor we can do anything with, instead of one correct one!

Therefore our tip if you really want to achieve data thriftiness data economy:

Order first with the function "Create customer account".
Once you have received the goods and you are sure that everything is is fine and that no further enquiries are necessary: Log in in your account with us and delete your account yourself! Or tell us to delete it.
However, we can only delete the account with everything that has been has been entered. The invoices themselves, which still contain the name and address must be archived for 10 years.

Only in this way can you be sure that all unwanted data will disappear - with us as with any other shop!

Update 03.2021

We now have a bonus point system. Every customer receives bonus points worth 5% of the purchase. These points can only be collected and used with a full customer account!