I know as sellers, we are suppose to be respectful and “kiss the customers butt”. But at the end of the day, we are all human. We get frustrated and let that frustration out, sometimes on someone that didn’t deserve it.
So, I’ll start by saying mine.
For anyone that sells in Canada, you’ll know that it’s impossible to sell a magnitude of items if you purchase tracking. Anything over 2cm’s in thickness must ship at parcel rates. The lowest a parcel rate will ever be, is around $10 and that’s for local shipping.
This makes selling most things impossible. Want to sell that multivitamin you purchased for $10, but never even opened. Too bad. Want to sell your kids old toys they never play with? Too bad on the cheaper ones. No one will pay $10 for something and add another $15-$25 for shipping, when the American sellers can ship it for under $5.
So to finally get to my worst moment. I ship tons of items with just stamps. Very, very rarely, does this ever cause problems(most people in Canada understand our shipping processes up here). However, I went through a couple rough weeks where buyer after buyer claimed their items didn’t arrive.
After having to refund them because I can’t provide proof of tracking, I had this woman message me. She says “my _____ hasn’t arrived yet? Can you provide tracking?”
I responded with “unfortunately, we cannot ship a $7 item, including shipping with tracking. In order to ship your item to where you live with tracking, the shipping alone would cost us $15+. However, if your item doesn't arrive by ‘whatever date’, I will contact the company that handles the tracking on our GPS enabled bubble mailers to see where your item is”.
She responded less than two minutes later saying she found it in her bushes out front. I’ve been tempted to use this approach again, but just can’t bring myself to it.
I’d love to hear the worst thing any of you have ever said to a buyer.
