Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Initiating a Refund

I mentioned in a previous post that I've been selling some of my old books and CDs to clear off some shelf space. So far, I've had tremendous luck with Amazon.com and the USPS. But this morning I had to initiate my first refund because a shipment got lost in the mail. The buyer was really decent about it. He submitted his order on June 15th, I sent the book out via USPS media mail on the 16th, and he waited until a week and a half had passed before sending me a polite inquiry about the order. I asked him to wait a few more days, which he did. But as of last night, the book still hadn't arrived. So, I emailed him back to tell him that I'd refund his money and to apologize for the inconvenience. If the book does eventually arrive, I'll just eat the cost.

Call me cynical, but I do wonder if this guy is trying to pull the wool over my eyes? Since I didn't pay for delivery confirmation, who's to say that this guy didn't already get the book when he sent me that first email?

Sigh. The sad thing is that the book was fairly heavy and quite large, so it took more effort on my part to package the darn thing, and to add insult to injury, the shipping costs were more than double what I would've paid for a normal trade size book. Oh well. Live and learn. The cost of doing business, I suppose.

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