Hey, Mr. Customer: read your email and reply to it damnit
Archive: Online bookselling
Sometimes we're forced to notify customers that the big they've ordered is so heavy that we'll need to charge additional shipping.
A fellow in Australia ordered the hefty The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. We sent him an email saying he'd have to pay several dollars more if he wanted us to send the book. He never wrote back, a month later some in the US ordered the book.
Now the guy in Australia writes to ask where his book is. Gordon pointed out we'd asked him to authorize additional shipping but we'd never heard from him. His follow up was an indignant note to say that he'd assumed we'd gone ahead and charged his card and that we are scum for not mailing him the book.
Would he really want to deal with someone who charges his card without permission?
It isn't unusual for people when notified that, say, it'll cost more than $6.00 to send a giant Bible dictionary to Colorado to never write back to say yea or nay. Many I suspect are chagrined that we aren't willing to lose money on shipping.
We get so many emails that imply that the person never read our note that there book had been shipped or how much they owe that I wonder if people are just deleting genuine email thinking it spam (or have ISPs with aggressive spam filters). Of course saying you never got a notice about the comic you bought on eBay is an easy way to defer paying for it.
Comments:
Feel free to share your feelings about Hey, Mr. Customer: read your email and reply to it damnit. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard