Man I can't stand high maintenance customers

This woman ordered from me and got free shipping. She ordered on a thursday evening and things do not usually ship the next day, but shipping is free.

It shipped for her on Monday, delivery was attempted on Thursday, but delivery failed. I did make a mistake, which I apologized for, but likewise no one answered the phone on her end to give FEDEX the correct address. I was not informed of this until Thursday night. I immediately had it set for the item to ship right back to the correct address, and told her it would arrive possibly monday or tuesday (today).

She calls complaining it hadn't been delivered on Monday, and that it has just taking so long, and she would like a shipping refund, and that she thinks we're unprofessional because we never sent email confirmations, and it couldn't possibly be hotmails fault because they're hotmail and they're big and they wouldn't have overzealous spam filters that block emails from Internet merchants.

Then she just goes off on a rant not letting me get in a word sideways about how I never apologized (I did), how I was belittling her by pointing out it had only been 7 business days since she placed her order (it had) and it was unfair to factor out weekends (talk to the Teamsters Union lady), and how it wasn't fair to point out that it would be delivered, with free shipping, only 3 business days past the original estimate.

I apologized, I addressed the issue as soon as it was reported to me, I ate the additional shipping cost. What did she want me to do? Refund the $0 she paid for shipping?

I guess I'm going to be out a recommendation, but certain high maintenance customers I think aren't quite worth it. This woman was stressed out, her voice was breaking, I'm trying to assuage her and she is just attacking, acting like she ordered something 3 months ago. She ended with a "I really regret buying from you, good luck with your business."

I've had shipping errors, delays, problems, etc before. I've had preorders that end up 6 months delayed. I've never seen someone so upset about a 3 day delay, especially when they had free shipping.

You aren't hurting for her business but for all you know she runs a super popular blog related to said item and if you were mean and/or rude to her she could give you some nasty publicity.

Sure, some customers are not worth it but in the end being nice pays off more times than not ;)

I agree it is strange though what sets some people off. The big things (like when everything that can go wrong does go wrong) they seem more able to shrug off, and then freak out over smaller items. If you have apologixed, there is little else you can do - send her a $5 off your next order coupon :)

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Refund the $0 she paid for shipping?

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You should probably have said that, well minus the $0 and she would have calmed down :)

These people are the reason why I prefer not to have to deal with customers to begin with. It's why I switched to publishing my own websites from doing sites for others.

Chris, can't you afford to pay someone to handle this type of stuff, I know with your sword line coming out, you may end up with more admin/customer service type stuff.

It seems when some people pay for service/product, they expect the entire world to cater to their every need, rational thinking goes out the window, and they hold you responsible for even their shortcomings.

Like a baby, throwing their toys out of the cot, because they're not getting what they want. ;)

One of the reasons there aren't any phone numbers on my websites. Forces clients like her to rant over email instead, which takes me just one click to handle :)

Sorry to hear about that Chris. This is why I hate dealing with customers. You can have 10 friendly transactions from 10 different people, but if the 11th one just makes everything frustrating, then that's the only one you will remember for from that day.

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Originally Posted by demosfen

One of the reasons there aren't any phone numbers on my websites. Forces clients like her to rant over email instead, which takes me just one click to handle :)

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Those are my thoughts too :lol: