Is the customer always right? Well, no.

While it is my goal and suggestion to do everything you can to please every customer, sometimes you simply can’t and have to stick by your guns. Here is something that happened to me over the holiday season.

One of my stores sells personalized goods. When a customer places an order, they type in what they want on the item. Obviously, the store’s policy is no returns on personalized goods. From time to time, I get a customer that lets me know that something was not personalized correctly and they want it done over. When this happens, I check the original order to see what happened. Honestly, most of the time, it is our mistake (misspelling or whatever) and we redo the order at our cost. My opinion, a good business practice.

My issue was with a customer who tried to blame us for their mistake. This customer ordered an item that had a monogram. As we all know a monogram is first initial/last initial/middle initial with the center initial larger than the others. We produced a product as the customer ordered and sent it to them. We got a note from the customer that the initials were done in the wrong order and they demanded that we redo it and overnight a correct item. Well I checked the order and we had done the item exactly as they ordered. Turns out this customer put the initials in the wrong order. I explained our policy and offered to send them a new item, at their cost, as the mistake was theirs. The customer went on to claim that the website was confusing (monogram vs. initials) and threatened to call their credit card company and contact the Better Business Bureau if we didn’t fix the problem. Knowing for a fact that we had not made an error, I dug in my heels. I sent an email explaining that it was their responsibility to make sure their order was correct in regards to the monogram. I pointed out that the item they ordered specifically requested they fill in the monogram they wanted. I even sited several other products on the site that asked for initials to prove that we had made every effort to minimize confusion.

So to make a long story short, I got an email back from the customer saying that it was unfortunate that we would work so hard to capitalize on an honest mistake and they sincerely hope that the profit we made on her order was worth it.

So who won here?  Answer: nobody. The customer didn’t get what they wanted and I certainly lost them as a customer for life. But I really felt that I had to set a precedent here. The error was after all their fault, and I am confident that had they actually contacted their credit card company and the BBB, that those organizations would have agreed with me.

Truth be told, had this customer started out by admitting fault, politely asking for me to make an exception, and left out the threats and demands, I probably would have sent her a new product for free.

What’s done is done, and I still don’t feel good about it. Would you have chosen to fight this battle?

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