You’ve Soiled Our Friendship Garden! Soiled It!

For a while, I owned and ran a garden supply store. I had a lady come in and she wanted a particular amount of soil. That amount turned into 7.5 pallets of soil. I didn’t have this all in stock, so I called my supplier and asked to see if they could deliver and drop this at her location. Since it wasn’t terribly far away, they agreed.

The customer and I agreed on pricing, she paid me, I called the supplier, and they had the soil to her in a couple of hours. The customer called and said the soil was dropped off and thanked us for everything, and I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then, the next day happened.

The customer came storming back into the store and started yelling at me.

Customer: “Why did you make me pay $9,000 when I only need two bags of soil?!”

I stopped for a moment and had to think about our entire conversation yesterday and was more than a bit confused.

After I finally picked my jaw off the floor:

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “I asked for two bags of soil yesterday and you charged me $9,000!”

Me: “Ma’am, you asked for [amount], not two bags. You even asked how much soil was in the bags, and that was how we determined your quantity.”

Customer: “I did no such thing. I asked for two bags of soil!”

Me: “Ma’am, I do video and audio recordings in here.”

I had multiple signs posted.

Me: “Should we go check the tapes?”

Customer: “There’s no need. You just need to take the soil back!”

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t do that. All soil sales are final, and this was a large quantity order. Also, I don’t know what happened to it last night, so I don’t feel comfortable sending it back to the supplier.”

After more yelling:

Customer: “I’m never coming back, I’m leaving bad reviews, and I’m telling everyone to not shop here!”

Me: “Great, see you next week!”

Sure enough, she showed up the next week acting like nothing had happened and wanting to buy some more stuff.