Partial refund?

[Pink Lady Exotics]

I need your opinions on this...

Tuesday I recieved payments for 2 snakes, and arranged to ship them today for Thursday morning delivery. A lot of things happened today involving Zoe being sick with a high fever from her shots yesterday, one of my cats coming down with some kind of eye cold and needing to go to the vet, my printer running out of ink in the middle of printing feed cards, FedEx labels, etc...so needless to say I missed getting everything done and snakes boxed up before the 6:30pm pickup at FedEx/Kinko's. I sent out an e-mail to the 2 people who I was shipping snakes to, and asked if a shipment tomorrow for Friday morning delivery would be OK, otherwise I can do Monday for Tuesday. I get an e-mail back from the one guy that says:

Tomorrow is the only weekday I'll be home to receive a shipment.

You'll have to ship to my work for Friday.

Jeff Flanagan
*address removed due to public forum posting*

It would be cool if you paypal me back some cash to compensate me for the hour off work and the 20 mile round trip I'll have to take to run the snake home.

I feel a bit miffed by that last part since everything today was out of my control. How do I handle that?

[kmurphy]

I don't know how much 1/2 hour work is and 20 miles worth of gas is but if 10 bucks will make the guy happy I'd pay it.

I know to you it appears that you have a valid reason for not shipping but to the ones receiving the shipment they just seem like excuses. When you get right down to it everyone that misses a deadline has a reason for doing so. But the fact remains that they still did miss that deadline. Just my 2 cents.

Kevin

[Pink Lady Exotics]

I understand that part, I was just curious how much would be commeasurate. I guess that I would never ask something like that -- I've had sellers delay shipping on me and I've never asked to be compensated. :shrug01:

[kmurphy]

I agree Jen, and most people wouldn't have. But I've seen plenty of posts in the BOI where the writer laments that they missed a days work etc. etc. This guys just more pushy then most. Seems to me though if he could have taken them at work he should have in the first place. Then he wouldn't have been put out or driven 20 miles. :shrug01:

[Cat_72]

Have you asked if another day would be easier for him? Maybe he'd have a different day home next week instead that could work for both of you?

I guess I can see the guy's point, though....but it may be easier for both of you to just try to arrange it for another day. That said, it is part of doing business, I guess....while these things may have been beyond your control, you DID agree to ship that day. I know what you're talking about.....I'm waiting on heat packs from Superior to ship out a package, and feel like a complete doorknob for possibly putting it off for something so silly. I guess I should have planned ahead better, instead of counting on the stuff being here when I expected it to be.

[hhmoore]

Hmmm - now is not the best time for me to respond to customer service issues (not only am I tired and cranky, but I am cold and hungry, lol), but I'll give it a whirl.

You had a crappy day, and didn't make the deadline for shipping. As some great philosopher once said, sh... er, stuff happens. As Kevin said, regardless of how legitimate your reasons, it comes off as an excuse (depending on the attitude of the recipient, it may be considered either understandable or BS). You did the right thing by notifying your customers ASAP of your inability to ship. One thing that you could have done differently, depending on your availability to so, is to have offered to ship at their earliest convenience (vs tomorrow or Monday).
Now, regarding the idea of the compensation: you have a couple of options. You can ignore/deny the request, or you can agree to it (or you can get ticked about it, cancel the sale, refund his money in full, and move to the next person - believe it or not, there are plenty of people that would take this approach - I know because I dealt with one recently...and no, I was not requesting money back at the time, lol).

Since this delay was not attributable to the animal's well being, the burden of responsibility does fall on you. The customer suggested that some sort of compensation might be in order, accept that. (the suggestion of $10 would be insulting to me...though I didn't think much of the customer's asking, either).

[hhmoore]

wow - that'll teach me to walk away for 45 minutes leaving a completed response unposted

[Cat_72]

LOL Harald....nothing wrong with that reply, made perfect sense to me!

[Wilomn]

You could, were you in a generous mood, email something like this back to him.

Dear......,

I've never been in a position where I could not ship when I said I would so therefore have never had anyone ask me to compensate them for something such as this. Being a newcomer to this situation, I have no clue what would be adequate compensation. I know I make about 8 dollars an hour and therefore would figure appx. 2 hours of my time is worth about 16 dollars. Of course if you have a high paying job it would be different but I could not afford to credit you what may be equal to the whole amount of shipping.

Would 20 dollars be fair? If not I'm afraid I'll just have to cancel the sale and hope to do better next time.

OR

What the ......? Compensate you when you are out NOTHING? There is a credit in your paypal account and I would thank you kindly to take your business elsewhere in the future.

[romad119]

Plus it depends on the amount of sale. Is he asking for $20 back from a $200 sale or a $50. It could factor into it. If its a fairly large part of your total sale, then the option to just refund in full becomes more practical?

[hhmoore]

LOL Harald....nothing wrong with that reply, made perfect sense to me!
I didn't mean it didn't make sense...just that while I was gone, Kevin added something I would have commented on, and you posted some of the same stuff I had

[Pink Lady Exotics]

Hmmm, I didn't get any notifications that there were new responses to this.

After talking to another well-known breeder, I went with the advice he gave me. This is how things ended:

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. If you would like, I'm prepared to issue you a 100% refund on Monday when the funds arrive in my account, otherwise I am planning to ship to the new address today as re-scheduled...please let me know which you prefer.

Go ahead and send the snake. I was thinking you were one of my $1000+ morph sellers, when I wanted to bill-back for the missed shipment date.

So I shipped her Thursday and she arrived safely Friday morning. He's very happy with her, and even got a laugh out of the receptionist's face when she opened the box. :thumbsup: