Friday, October 29, 2010

Is it Extortion? You bet it is.

I've been having a little customer service fun with a rather prickly customer over the past couple of days who placed an order for a few figures last week, and then waited a couple of days after we shipped it to write in and tell us he felt like we should have applied the Octoberfest 10% coupon to it because he feels he's been a good customer in the past. No mention of any discount was made on the order or via e-mail prior to us shipping it.

At the time he placed the order our Octoberfest offer had been over for more than a week. I mentioned that his order did qualify for his recurring customer coupon (which he didn't use), and went ahead and applied his 5% coupon, but we had to credit him for the amount since the order had already been shipped and closed. He then got REALLY MAD and said he was well aware of those coupons, but did not use it because he expected a larger discount. I looked up his customer history notes and showed he has done this two other times in the past. He threatened to return the order if we didn't grant him the 10% discount, which boils down to about $20 bucks over what we already credited him.

I told him to return it.

He said a lot more than that actually, most of it pretty nasty, but I'm not going to waste time posting it here. I gotta tell you folks I'm pretty easy going when it comes to these sorts of things and will pretty much bend over backwards for any of our customers, but as soon as you start calling me names it's all over.

So the only thing I'm going to say here is that placing an order, letting us fill it, and then holding it hostage threatening to return it or charge it back if we don't grant you a big discount (i.e. refund) after the fact in an amount that is not currently being offered to anyone else is, well, a good way to get banned from the store for life.

Ya got that - Jack?

Boy, I'm glad it's Friday. :-)

4 comments:

MARl0 said...

I always love hearing these customer service nightmare stories. It's unbelievable how some customers react to the most random things. Some are so outrageous, that it's impossible to imagine that they aren't missing something upstairs in general. You can bet that you're not the only retailer that has had to deal with that same customer over a ridiculous request like that.

I can, at the very least, say that I've had probably the best costumer service from RACS over the years compared to any other retailer (online or otherwise).

tenkenX6 said...

Some people just can't ever be happy. They think that they're somehow entitled to get a discount for various reasons. I personally have to deal with these kind of unreasonable/rude customers from time to time. I work in the retail field, so it comes with the territory, but I still have to admit it's really annoying and dumb. Oh well, they're making their own lives worse with their own hands...

Shadowfox said...

Just another one that proves the customer isn't always right.

It's always nice to see a business owner sticking to his guns.

Robert said...

It's always nice to see a business owner sticking to his guns.

Some times this works OK for us, and sometimes it doesn't. With this customer, best case - we'll loose a sale. Worst case I end up getting slammed on some Anime forum for not 'bending over backwards' - which really just means 'bending over'. I'll go a long way for anyone as long as I feel it's 'fair play' for all of our customers.