Advice needed: Use ECHO pymnt module or default cc?

[Gata]

Hello,

 

I am looking for some advice. I use ECHO as a merchant providor for our brick and morter store. I am in the process of setting up an OScommerce site for the store (we sell books). Our stock is antiquarian and collectible- thus one-of-a-kind. We don't have duplicate titles.

 

I need to set up the payment options to accept credit cards, which should be no problem using the ECHO payment mod. Is the payment processed directly at the time of order? I prefer to process the order myself. Although rare, there is on occasion a double inquiry for a book that we have in stock- either through email or from a walk-in customer. We always sell the book to the first person who inquired or placed the order. Because we do not have multiple copies, we would not want someone to pay for a book that is actually on hold or just sold to another person.

 

We rarely have this happen, but we do sell online through a couple of other venues and have no way of instantly updating all databases at all hours.

 

Any thoughts on this? Should we just use the default cc option- which stores the info and xx's out the middle numbers? Or does the payment wait for orders to be processed by us even when using a merchant gateway? I want to be able to confirm the order before charging the customer and have the option of notifying them if the book is no longer available without having to issue refunds.

 

Thanks for any advice!

Catherine