The day my husband dropped the ball

Sometimes we make mistakes too. It’s not always the customer’s fault! Really, we’re just having fun here, sharing some of our wilder customer service stories, for the most part our loyal customers are fantastic! Today’s story is one that practically gave me a stomach ulcer at the time, because it was all our fault baby!

During our first year of business, I was pregnant with my second child. I suffer from Hyperemesis during my pregnancies. This means, for me, I throw up anywhere from 5 - 20 times per day. For some, the disease is life threatening. Women get very dehydrated and have to get IVs. My babies always did very well, my body shifts gears when I’m pregnant. It doesn’t care much about me, but allocates all of my resources to the baby. Which is good, I’m thankful my babies never suffered. I was a mess, however.

I was very ill, I’d been in for an IV treatment and told to stay in bed. That was fine by me, if I held very still with my eyes shut, I could often keep the vomiting at bay. Crippling depression accompanies Hyperemsis for me, and it’s really a very dreadful, dark time.

During this period, my poor husband was trying to run the business without me. He does a pretty fine job on his own now, but then, when everything was new and he didn’t have any help, it was really stressful for him. Eric was also trying to keep an eye on our toddler so he didn’t disturb me, and ladies, he’s a terrible multi-tasker.

Eric accidentally shipped some metal snap dies to a customer First Class, when they had specifically selected Priority Mail in order for it to get there before Mother’s Day. The package arrived after Mother’s Day, and the customer was upset to find they’d paid more for shipping than we’d paid to send it.

The customer writes, and my husband writes back. They go back and forth. My husband said something about how if packages are under 13 ounces, he always ships it First Class because the Post Office has told him it will arrive in the same amount of time. Well, regardless of whether or not that is true, if a customer has paid for Priority shipping, it should ship Priority. And if it didn’t, the customer should be refunded the shipping overage, right? Eric made some more mistakes talking about Paypal fees, and was just plain ornery.

Well, Eric must have been going out of his mind or something, because he argues with the customer for a while until his wife, the one he had purchased the die set for, emails him and says that she’ll leave negative feedback. At this point, even though he’s been specifically ordered by my midwife not to disturb me or stress me out in anyway, he climbs the stairs to tell me what’s going on.

I e-mailed the woman back, apologizing for my husband and refunding the shipping overage. I made a newbie business owner mistake by going into too much detail, rather than just solving the problem and getting it over with, I told her about our shopping cart issues, and my pregnancy sickness. She responded amicably and I felt relieved that I’d solved the situation.

Except, she still went on to post negative feedback for us, complete with an animated “sad story” smiley face playing me a violin for my “morning sickness”. The review was so upsetting at the time, especially since I had apologized and rectified the situation, but I suppose it was justified seeing how horribly my husband had handled the situation. Still, it rankled with me for an entire year after the fact! If that customer is still around today, perhaps she’ll take some satisfaction in knowing that. ;)

Ah well, you make mistakes when you’re in business, especially when you’re first starting out. It used to really make my stomach do acrobatics, but I’m less emotional about it now. We do our best, and sometimes we fail.

What should have occurred in this situation, was my husband should have immediately refunded their entire shipping amount and issued a coupon code for their trouble, apologizing for missing the Mother’s Day date they were trying to make. First rule of customer service: Don’t go into a bunch of unnecessary detail. Your customer does not need to know all about your shopping cart issues, Paypal fee gripes, or even your death bed illness. Okay, so I wasn’t on my death bed, but even with how sick I was, I shouldn’t have expected anyone else to care. Especially not after my husband had handled the situation so badly.

Want to see our terrible review? Here it is! Click to embiggen.

Good thing he didn’t “send our business into the toilet” like she predicted, but we have learned a thing or two about customer service since then!