Some of you have wondered, maybe, why we didn’t just give the customer I talked about on my last customer service entry the benefit of the doubt and ship out a new package for her. While someday I’d like to be a big enough company that can afford to write packages like that off, we’re not there yet. And also, we’ve been burned before in the past. Pretty badly.

During our early days of the business while we were still living in Utah, a local customer came over to pick up an order. I knew her from a message board, if memory serves me correctly, so she stayed a while with her baby and we chatted. She told me how she had ordered some ready made diapers from a company while she was visiting a family member or friend in another state. The diapers did not come in time, so she thought they were lost. When she notified the company, they sent another batch out immediately. Both packages ended up arriving on her doorstep. And she told me, “I just kept both of them, because hey, free diapers.”

I was shocked. This was someone who I would have assumed was an honest person. And maybe she considers herself to be an honest person, but it really opened my eyes. People tend to think businesses have deep pockets or something, that a skimming a little here and there won’t hurt their bottom line.

Even after that experience, I still had a difficult time believing people would really do that. I mean, I would notify the company and tell them both packages ended up arriving. I’d write “refuse” on one and send it back. Wouldn’t everybody most people? We gave a few customers the benefit of the doubt in a few cases just like that and ended up learning, for whatever reason, the answer to that question is an emphatic no.

Okay, maybe that’s not fair. I mean, the ratio of lost packages we’ve had to the amount of packages that arrive safe and sound is far from even. In 5 and a half years of business, MOST packages have made it. And MOST customers have been lovely. But when you’re running a small home business, the folks that try to take advantage of you sure make you cautious.

Example #1

We are glad to ship worldwide. But it carries a certain risk. A customer ordered an expensive package and requested it be shipped Airmail Parcel Post. Which is the slowest shipping method on the planet. If you’re in Europe somewhere and we’re here in the states, shipping a box of fabric to you Parcel Post is going to take up to 2 or 3 months! After a few weeks, the customer was anxious. She wrote, “Where’s my package, where’s my package?” We went over the shipping method she chose yet again, explaining that it could take a long time to arrive.

Without waiting, she filed a Paypal reversal. We explained our side to Paypal, but because it was an international package without any method to track it (we showed them our post office receipts and international post stubs), Paypal decided in the customer’s favor and gave her her money back.

We never heard from her again, but I’m guessing, given the rarity of lost packages, it eventually arrived safe and sound and she was able to get free goods. Whether or not that actually happened, I guess we’ll never know. But it does leave a business owner feeling a little raw.

Example #2

Despite our firm policy on how we proceed in regard to lost or damaged packages (we must have evidence of the damage, we must wait the full allotment of time USPS or Fed Ex states before filing an Insurance claim, etc) sometimes we have bent the rules. This particular time, Eric was dealing with a customer who had ordered quite a lot of our Industrial snaps. Because she was in such a hurry to get them, she requested they be shipped Express Mail. Eric complied, but the package took longer to arrive than it should have. This is always frustrating for a business owner, because regardless of whether or not it’s the shipping carrier’s fault, the blame and responsibility always seems to land squarely on the business owner’s shoulders.

Because the confirmation confirmed that the package had not yet arrived, he thought perhaps the package really had gotten lost in a mail hiccup. He took a chance, and shipped her another package of snaps Express Mail at no additional cost to the customer. A day or two later, BOTH delivery confirmations showed that BOTH packages had safely arrived. Eric had instructed the customer to please refuse the first package if it ever did arrive so it would come back to us. She did not. Nor did she answer any further emails from us.

Perhaps the customer felt like she deserved the free snaps because of the worry she experienced waiting for them in the first place. I don’t know. But these kinds of experiences make us very, very cautious about just sending free product out without first confirming that the original package was indeed lost or damaged.

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It’s a tough call, balancing customer care with your own vital business care. I know many small business owners who have driven their businesses right into the ground by sending out free replacement product. While it is sadly impossible to please everyone, we do try our best.

If you’re a small business owner, how do you attempt to balance customer care?

… to date.

I can’t remember what the woman ordered, exactly. But Eric still has the shipping records for keepsake purposes. It’s these kinds of stories we line our memory boxes with so our posterity can know just what kind of craziness we sometimes went through all in the name of providing cloth diaper fabric to the world.

The shipping records are an important part of this story because they have the weight of the package shipped printed on them.

When the woman received her package, she claimed it was full of “sticky notes and invoices” and nothing else. It was her first time ordering with us, so she didn’t have a relationship with us, and we didn’t have one with her. On her end, I’m sure it felt like perhaps we’d scammed her. Charging her for lovely fabric and sending an odd assortment of scrap paper instead. On our end, my husband was suspicious. Anyone he doesn’t know claiming they didn’t receive what he knew very well he sent? Red flag.

I, as I often am (at least when it’s not that time of the month), was the voice of calm reason. I pointed out that it was probably a Fed Ex issue. Perhaps the package split open and some employee in some shipping department somewhere lost the fabric and taped up some papers he thought had fallen out of it. C’mon, it’s not so far fetched right? Those of you who ship packages world wide every single day know that sometimes really weird things happen to your stuff. If I could attach little cameras to those beat up packages that come back from overseas, cut into, taped back together, and arrive back on our doorstep 2 months after we shipped them, I’m sure it would be a sight to behold.

This package wasn’t international though. It was domestic. And baffling.

We talked to the customer, explained we would never in a million years send a package of scrap paper. We don’t even own a sticky note pad! Told her we’d file a claim with Fed Ex, because obviously something went awry somewhere.

Fed Ex conducted their usual investigation. Package arrived at destination? Check. Um, excuse me, yes the package arrived, but the contents inside (allegedly) DID NOT.

I asked her to please send photographs of the package or send the whole thing back so we could see just what kind of weird papers had been shipped to her. I’d certainly recognize papers from our shop. But she never did.

Many emails and phone calls later, the woman ended up filing a report with the BBB and Eric filed a report with the DSATTCAT (Don’t Sell Anything to This Customer Again Team), which entails writing her name on a piece of paper and pinning it to the wall above his desk.

So, what do you think? Did Fed Ex mess up along the way, or was this woman trying to scam us in a very creative, but odd way? I for one like to give people the benefit of the doubt and place the blame on an employee at Fed Ex, but who knows. There are some strange ducks out there, no?