Customer Service...what a bitch!

Oh, no gender implications in that. Really!

So, it turns out that a fellow who named himself after a famous comic book dog for his eBay moniker ID emails me, then phones me, to complain that of the several items that he had ordered, only one had arrived. Where were the other items? And having heard that my son was helping me to manage fulfillment, proceeded to question my son's reading ability, and then demand that the remaining items be shipped to him OVERNIGHT in a fevered cell phone message.

Now, I've been selling on eBay for a number of years now, and have been moderately successful at it. My sales have increased comfortably over the years, doubling at one point a couple of years ago, and now...this summer I'm finding that sales are getting close to doubling again. Which is great, though it puts demands on my time, and given that I have a regular full-time job to hold fast to, the increased business, while delightful, has also proven to be a bit stressful, as well. So, I hired my son to assist me in fulfillment each week. He gets paid a handy sum per hour in cash, and I'm freed up to do other things in my online business.

And along comes ol' 'Ace' here--complaining of my poor service, demanding immediate fulfillment, and in essence insulting my son for his poor performance. What would YOU do?

Yet...here's the capper: it wasn't my son. It was MY error, from the word go. All on me. I admit as much to my unhappy customer, still in a fairly calm manner tinged with only the barest measure of sarcasm (I AM a good writer, remember), and his response to me was that...

'If you bother to look at you paid invoices. You would see a multi sale. This
is what it looks like. There are NO EXCUSES....

and then...

'After reading an invoice I do not understand the "oversight"
PLEASE SEND ME THE OVERNIGHT CONFERMATION # & TRACKING #
The only book I did receive is 223...

'If I receive the comics on MONDAY it would have taken a MONTH to complete
the order. How is that reasonable. '.

Hmm. So, here's the thing. In most every way, it's completely understandable that he's upset, and that taking a month for all the items to arrive is certainly not reasonable. Points to him for all this. A mistake was made, and he bore the suffering of having to wait.

I'm going to send his books out to him on Monday and pay either Priority Mail (a week to deliver) or, if I'm feeling particularly generous and stupid at the same time, I may send them overnight. Which will be about $36 vs $9 for Priority Mail. I'm really undecided on this--but the 'thing' remains--

He was a total dick about it.

So--yeah, I'm going to OVERNIGHT the books to him, and only because under the circumstances it's the 'right' thing to do-- but the guy is STILL a dick and I'm going to remove him from ever ordering from me again on eBay. I don't need this aggravation, and prefer the multitude of my customers who, generally, are nice and patient with my occasional errors. Yeah, I'm not perfect and I tend to broadcast that fact to whomever will listen. And if I screw up, I'll go that extra few kilometers to make things right again--but I swear, if you start insulting my son, act like an asshole, and generally come across like a demanding !@#$, how far do you think that'll take you in this world? A series of pyrrhic victories as you browbeat your way through the world.

What remains is the issue of feedback. The guy's not happy, and his books are going to be way late, so I risk getting a pile of negative feedback from this fellow, ol'... 'Ace' as I call him, referring to his seeming attachment to Batman's faithful canine friend. Well, whatever. If he negs me, he negs me, and he runs the risk of my own ire should I choose to respond to his negs with my own.

Still, that's plainly NOT fair--and I don't play that game. The best I might feel compelled to do would give him some NEUTRALS, just for the attitude. That's probably not fair, either. Jeezis!!

Anyone know a good therapist?