Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Joys of Retailing on Line

Be advised, this is a rant.
I get a lot of email orders for my detail parts and kits. The vast majority are processed through Paypal.
And in all the years of doing this I've had 2 "disputes" launched by customers via Paypal. Both for "non-receipt " of items ordered.
In both cases, it was a simple matter of customer expectations exceeding normal postal delivery speed.
The latest one really takes the cake though.
Last Sunday I received an order through Paypal for $11.00 of parts. It went into the mail either Monday or Tuesday. Saturday I get an email from Paypal telling me that a "dispute" has been launched by the customer because he hadn't received his order.
Paypal, by Consumer Rights Law, freezes the amount in dispute in my account.
Now here's where I go off the rails;
There was no contact from the customer to me about the status of his order. Had he emailed me I would have told him that it was in the mail and that letter mail to the US can take at least a week if not more.
There are no speed bumps in the "dispute" system to get the customer to wait a reasonable amount of time, nor to make sure that he at least makes one attempt at contacting the seller before swinging the "dispute" cudgel.
This customer's behaviour implies that I'm dishonest and require prodding by Paypal to honour the orders I receive.
Now I'll freely admit that I've missed orders in the past. And USPS or Canada Post have lost a couple of shipments on me over the years. And in every case I've made good on those orders.
A simple email about an overdue order will get my immediate attention.
All I ask is that you do me the courtesy of contacting me first before involving others. It's a point of pride for me that I deliver what's been ordered.
And yes, I'm super pissed at this guy right now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The person is way out of line.

I do a lot of mailing for a historical society I belong to and for my model railroad club. Ninety nine percent of the people are great. But there's always one who starts emailing you three or four days after sending their order to find out why their item has not arrived.

The world is full clueless people.

Stephen Gardiner said...

I'm sure i drive people crazy. I tend to wait forever, and almost without fail, whenever i decide that its been weeks and nothing has appeared, i send an email following up and the package is waiting for me when i get home from work.

That said, the move you are ranting about is terrible, its one of the things that keeps me from trying to sell stuff off online as i clear stuff out, having to deal with jerk people through their keyboards. I'd rather donate our old stuff to charity or shlep it around to stores who may buy it.