This customer is absolutely the worst kind for any honest merchant to receive. I am not the first they have done this to, and I won't be the last. They purchased a shirt in early January, 3 weeks (or more) later they purchased another. The second shirt they ordered they claimed fit perfectly. They wrote to our customer service Feb 9th and left angry VM's and emails claiming to have tried to contact us for weeks, which none of the company log files supported. This would be our 800 call records, our corporate email servers (including Google Gmail that we use for a middle server), as well as voicemail records. Three different entities of servers all showed no previous contact outside of current and next day of contact where they claimed to have tapped all three during the course of the month.
The messages received indicated a tough customer, so was escalated to me where I handled the call. In spirit of customer service, (and the obvious type of customer I was talking to), told them I would waive the 15% restocking fee for a full refund, only to find out later in the conversation, the shirt had been laundered. Still honoring my refund promise with the new information (laundered), told them I could not however pay for return shipping, (we had already given them free shipping on the item in the first place) and was now a disqualified return. Told customer to return the item neatly folded as we do resell returns just like all other vendors.
Received item a week or so later. It was crammed so tightly in a USPS Small flat rate box, I am not sure how it was even possible to do so. Imagine an linen XL dress shirt crammed in a box that is about 25% of the size that would be required to be of a reasonable fit. In short, the shirt was destroyed. I was originally not not sure what their motives were in this act as I did tell them we would take the return and waive the fees. Later I realized it was just basic vindictiveness because I would not also pay for the return shipping as they were trying to demand of us. I was not to pleased with this and called and left a VM asked them to call me back that I would need to hold $40 back from the refund due to the condition of the return. When you stuff a linen dress shirt in a small box like that not only does it wrinkle the linen badly to the point it breaks the cellulose fibers, but the collar, cuff, and placket thickeners are now folded and bent, they are damaged beyond the ability to fix with a press. When we received the return in this way, it was not about the money or the shirt, as the shirt had been laundered and could not be resold anyway, it was just the principle of it. They called back un-happy about my decision. I was at the time driving and explained that it was disheartening how when after I gave them a break, especially on a laundered shirt that was not even returnable in the first place, that they would return it like this. It actually required a lot of effort to pull it from the box, it must have required that much more to get the thing in there. I did not yell or scream on the phone as they claim, I simply and firmly explained how rude it was that they would return the shirt in this condition while expecting a full refund and ended the call because I just did not want to argue with them. In hindsight it would have been better to just let it go, but it was, and is quite upsetting to encounter humanity such as this.
They texted a book of text for to me to read, threatened bad reviews, and several other agencies, etc if I did not give them the full refund they continue to say "they are entitled to". At that point, I quickly refunded hoping to just be done with it. Unfortunately, now with their 1 star reviews, apparently they don't follow their own promises and just more vindictiveness. Apparently I should have given everything for free to them as they wanted and should have had nothing to say about it.
Upon receipt of the shirt, we measured. It was correct in the shoulders as would therefore have been the second shirt they claimed fit well. I surmised, due to the fact they have shown themselves to be dishonest in every way this far, and the fact that the item was laundered, that it was worn during this 3-4 week period and shoulder sizing was the excuse they came up with to return.
Unfortunately, these types of folks are a merchants worst nightmare. Fortunately, they make up a smaller percentage of us. Every bad review we receive because of difficult customers, we receive hundreds of 5 star reviews from the honest happy customers not looking for a free deal out of threat of bad reviews. They copy and pasted this on every review board they can find. including google, trustpilot, sitejabber, yelp, reseller ratings, wedding wire - and probably more that I just haven't found yet. You be the judge.
