Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 27
As a courtesy, and because we almost entirely sell to resellers and companies rather than individuals, our website allows people placing orders to enter a shipping account with the major carriers, rather than us shipping it and charging them. Since we effectively charge the list price for shipping, this invariably saves money for anyone who gives their own account.
The downside is that we’re not able to “test” these accounts until the order’s ready to ship; if there are any issues, they won’t be found out until someone tries to create a label if we’re lucky, or until we get our weekly invoice with a big “COULDN’T PROCESS” charge-back if we’re not.
This happened so often that we instituted a three-strike policy, after which a note gets added to the customer’s file to never use that account again, no matter what.
Draconian? Yes. Necessary? Read on.
Customer: “Why did I get this email asking for an account number? I gave you one.”
Accounting: *Gets the information, confirms the order* “Ah, I see. We have that account flagged as unusable, sir. Do you have another?”
Customer: “The account is fine; just use that one.”
Accounting: “I see that just last week, we had to re-bill you for the shipping cost plus the correction fee, because ‘payment of shipment was refused.'”
Customer: “Oh, that. No, sorry, my normal accountant was out last week.”
Accounting: “The issue is that this refusal was from three weeks ago. There was also an issue in February, as well as in January; as this was the third incident in as many months, we have flagged this account as unusable.”
Customer: “Listen, I’m sorry there were issues, but I really don’t want to pay your outrageous prices.”
Accounting: “We would be more than happy to use any other account of yours, sir, but because of the repeated issues, we cannot use this one.”
Customer: “I don’t have another account, and the payment issues have been fixed, so use that one!”
Accounting: “We cannot, sir.”
Back and forth it went, until finally it was escalated up to one of the VPs who authorized the use as a one-off. Two weeks later, we got a [Carrier] invoice… with a big old charge-back saying the customer refused to pay.
The VP was called to task by the CEO for overriding his decision on the matter, and the next time the customer tried to place an order, we didn’t ask; we just told him that we would not use ANY account and he would be charged for shipping.
Related:
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 26
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 25
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 24
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 23
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 22
