A customer has just messaged me with a photo of the package I mailed to her in America - it contained 5 commissioned pet signs, and the postage cost was £8 - the packet has been opened - split all along one side, and the contents removed The signs are of no used to anyone else - they are of her pets, with their names on - hours of work, stolen, and now I need to re-do them all, when I am so pressed for time already (am technically on holiday this week, but am using the time to work on my commissions list) and pay for another lot of postage to America.
I’m going to claim through Royal Mail for the cost of postage and contents, but that’s an extra hassle I could do without
And I’m so disappointed for my customer - she has waited patiently for her order, and was so excited for it
Thats terrible but at least your customer sounds like she was understanding - so many times we are blamed for things beyond our control. I hope you manage to get compensation from Royal Mail although you can’t get your time back. These are the things that sometimes take the joy out of making
Thats not nice, poor customer, poor you. Hope you manage to rest on your week off as well as complete your commissions. Hoping you are productive and successful
So sorry to hear this, theft of handmade work is just awful.
Just out of interest how did you describe the contents on the customs form? I always write personalised… in the hope that it will deter someone from stealing it, as it’ll be useless to anyone else other than the customer. It’ll be interesting to hear what others put on their custom forms?
I also send items of high value (I presume 5 custom signs is high value) via International Tracked & Signed, I think that can deter theft too as the parcel can be traced through the system.
I hope that you can get some compensation from RM.
@millyandpip, sorry, missed this before - I had put ‘wooden pet signs’ on the customs label last time, This time I put ‘personalised signs’ on the label.
So, I re-did the whole commission, posted it 13th October…and it still hasn’t arrived!
It seems very odd to me that having confirmed the address etc with the buyer, the first parcel had missing contents, and the second one just never showed up - what are the odds on that happening?
So now she is asking for a refund, which I will have to give her, I’ve spent £10.30 on postage each time so I have to go through the hassle of reclaiming that (she wanted to know if I’d paid for it to be tracked the second time, but I couldn’t afford that as she was undercharged postage anyway because of the postage discounts for multiple items - it’s impossible to get it accurate when you have items of varying sizes and weights), and I’ve also used my wood and paints and varnish and hours of my time.
I have a horrible feeling I am being scammed…two packets could not have problems like that when she doesn’t apparently have any other issues with her mail…
Oh gosh, so sorry to hear this @DandelionsGallery It certainly does sound rather suspicious. I always send peronsalised items abroad using International Tracked for my own piece of mind, maybe you could increase your International postage costs slightly to cover any possible multiple item orders.
Oh, I’m so sorry that you’ve gone through all this. I’ve experienced this a few times in other ‘lives’ and would now only send signed for… it also means that Royal Mail don’t have a ‘let out’ clause too. As in ‘it wasn’t us it was them’ kind of scenario.
I had one lady in this country Cornwall to be precise who claimed 3 times that something hadn’t arrived. Fortunately I had sent the last one tracked and it was possible to show that she was just trying it on.
Another time, the postman had put it under a chair in the van and it took him 3 weeks to re-discover it… he was honest though and it just made quite a funny story. In the US… one lady was getting quite irate and it turned out that it had been left at the PO for her and she’d not collected it so after 2 weeks it was returned to the UK via their redelivery system. I don’t know why I’m telling yo all this it’s not strictly relevant to your woes but in the spirit of the whole thing we can only trust … most folk are very honest.
I hope that it all gets resolved without you losing out anymore… once is always enough.
Best wishes,
I had a Facebook messge from someone the other day asking if I’d posted something as she’d ordered / paid via Folksy a week earlier,
I replied that I had and the exact time and date as I had the payment slip and made the point that my parcels don’t go through the letterbox but are clearly labelled and I’ve never had one go missing. Could she please check in case it had been left somewhere.
For the next 3 days I cringed whenver I got a Facebook message in case it was her. Then I got a reponse. Her husband had found it in the shed. Their postie normally leaves a note but hadn;'t
Phew. It wasn’t so much the thought of losing a single parcel it was just that I hated to break an excellent delivery record.
(I have oad one missing before but that was, I’m pretty sure, the customer messing about and only one out of 1400+ is not bad
@DandelionsGallery hope it sorts itself out. Must admit I don’t exactly jump at the chance to post to America after reading on here about missing parcel problems.
xx
Sorry to chime in again, Sara @DandelionsGallery but I wouldn’t let this bad experience put you off sending to America (US). In my other life as I mentioned before I used to send stuff to the US all the time by both tracked and un tracked methods and the vast majority of the time everything would be absolutely fine. Their Post Service seems to try hard to do a good job. What I would say though that if you feel that part of your customer care is replacing items if they get lost and then claiming for them we should make sure that the we charge the correct postage, which is a lot. I know that that might put off some buyers but perhaps it’s better that way. There should be some profit in creating something lovely.
The country I’ve had the most issues with in terms of posting successfully has been in Europe, probably your experience is different but I’ve always had issues with sending to Germany. Incredible really. Thing is here you can probably spot a weird looking address and then ask the question but when a customer lives in a different country you may not notice it and then … the worst happens.
I’ve had no other issues with posting many, many items to America, so I certainly won’t let it put me off.
My latest communication with the customer - I asked her if she would kindly check one more time at the sorting office, just in case…and she said she checked but the parcel wasn’t there.
So I said I would go though my Paypal account to find the payment and refund it. But she says she doesn’t have Paypal, can I refund the money to Google Wallet. Now if I refund a different way, she can still go through Paypal and say she hasn’t had the items and ask them to process a refund, so there is no way I am doing that. Surely even if a debit/credit card was used to pay via Paypal the money would go back the way it came?
It all seems very suspicious to me… I will send her the refund via Paypal, so that I have proof she has been refunded. I’m just wondering what she will come up with next!
I’ve used Paypal for years (in a different life) and I’ve always refunded payments that I’ve received via Paypal (whether they’ve used a credit/debit card or a Paypal account) back via Paypal. As you say if you do it any other way she could still potentially claim via Paypal and it could get very messy.
I think you’ve made a wise decision. You’ll have proof of what you’ve done and that can only be good.
I really feel for you Sara, knowing how painstaking you are with your work, and how fairly you treat your clients, it’s a pity that courtesy can’t be extended to you. A very difficult and unsettling situation for you, such a shame.
So, as the Paypal payment was over 60 days ago I can;t just refund that way. I offered to send a Paypal payment, she said she’d rather do a Google Wallet request, so I thought, well, I’ll print copies of the payment as proof and just do it to get some closure. However, what she has sent me in the dollar to pound conversion is over £2 more than she originally paid. I’ve already lost Folksy commission (cos I doubt I can get that back after all this time), Paypal fees (can’t reclaim those either), materials, time, extra postage etc, and now I’m meant to refund more than I originally received? That can’t be right, can it?
I think I would ignore her request! I would let her chase you up through PayPal, she is not playing a fair game here, giving you so much stress you can do without. Or alternatively say you have repaid through Google wallet, and when she says it hasn’t arrived, well, its her turn to start wondering where it is! Am I mean? I don’t think so, you have gone way beyond what you should have!!! Just ignore her…
The signs are of no used to anyone else - they are of her pets, with their names on - hours of work, stolen, and now I need to re-do them all, when I am so pressed for time already (am technically on holiday this week, but am using the time to work on my commissions list) and pay for another lot of postage to America.
