@city*satins wrote:
Best buyer I ever had ordered $600 in clothing from me. She had already ordered about $8,000 from me over the previous year and a half. So we had established a confident relationship as buyer and seller already.
Anyway - I was in Canada. She was in New Mexico. She asked me to expedite this particular order, as she was leaving the country in a month. There was plenty of time for it to arrive, and she had been reassured by her postmaster that if worse came to worst, and she'd left by the time the box arrived, it would be forwarded along with the rest of her mail to her new home in Greece.
Well, the package arrived, but late and instead of forwarding it to her, tracking showed it as stopped, then completely disappeared. I had not only insured it but expedited it, so there was no reason for it to disappear and when I put in a claim to Canada Post, because of the high ticket price of the insurance they wanted scads of paperwork showing the value of the merchandise, etc etc and then launched an investigation that took them all the way to some warehouse in state adjacent to New Mexico where they 'hoped' the package had been sent as 'lost'. Never found it.
Meanwhile, never having had a problem like this before, and not foreseeing one, I had already spent the $600 on new stock and didn't have the $ to refund the buyer. I kept her current on what was happening, but after 3 weeks told her that Canada Post, notified me that they would not settle the insurance claim with me for 180 days. I asked my buyer if she'd permit me to reimburse her in bi-weekly installments of $75 until the full $600 was refunded to her.
Her response was Of course not! Don't be silly! Take whatever time it requires to get the insurance claim paid out and if it takes 6 months, so be it!
At the end of 6 months, Canada Post agreed to pay out my claim but for another 10 days we went back and forth while they tried to convince me to accept $600 in stamps! LOL. I tried to explain that stamps were no use to me as I couldn't use stamps and finally they relented and paid me the full $600 plus the original postage I'd paid (the class of service I'd selected had guaranteed delivery - so that was another $45)
Buyer got her refund including postage, of course, and continued to buy from me over the next 5 years, with us using DHL international courier service, which never fumbled a single order and never charged any kind of border broker type fee.
A great, great buyer who could have made my life a misery at the time but instead was kind and supportive and patient.
Wow, what a buyer! I don't think I would have been okay to wait 6 months for my refund.
