so, here’s a boring slice of a day in the life of a snowboard shop owner

January 19, 2008 | Category: john

people been telling me, “man, you must have some Wild stories!”. yeah. most of these fall into the file of “customer service” and are mind-numbingly tedious. fixing little problems before they blow up into big messy ones. usually -like 99% of the time - it results in us taking it in the shorts. keep the customer satisfied (simon & garfunkel, bridge over troubled water album. my aunt Savina owned it). not complaining, just sayin’.

so, in an effort to show what a wild week i had, here’s a transcript -mercifully edited for you- of an email exchange with a web customer. oh wait, a Canadian web customer.
Julie is the customer, Gayle is our Shipping Manager, Adam is my Trusty Partner, and I am the guy who is super-polite.

Hello
My order was not processed due to the fact that you were unable to ship the product to Canada. My Visa shows a credit of $206.33, but I was charged $218.79. Can you please credit the difference of $12.46 to my Visa. This was probably due to a difference in exchange rates but since I am not actually returning anything as it was never shipped I do not expect to lose the $12.46. Please reply if there are any issues.
Thank you
Julie

Hello Julie – We received money in US dollars and it was returned in US dollars, unfortunately we cannot control the exchange rate. The item, which states on our website we cannot ship it Internationally, was refunded the day after you ordered it. Our credit card program does not allow us to refund more money when the total US dollar amount was already refunded. I’m sorry, but we cannot do anything further regarding the $12.46.
Gayle

That doesn’t make any sense. If you weren’t able to ship it then I shouldn’t have been able to order it in the first place. Obviously I had put in my address when I placed the order so if you weren’t able to ship it then I shouldn’t have been able to get to the screen that allowed me to enter credit card information. Please escalate this to a manager, this can be considered credit card fraud.
Thank you

Adam and John –
Discuss amongst yourselves and let me know how to go about this.
Gayle

J-
Did you ever do anything about this? Do you want me to handle it?
AG

Dear Ms. Kiska,
I would not consider this credit card fraud.
We are in our 19th year of service to the snowboarding community, and we are proud of the standards we hold ourselves to. we have never meant to defraud anyone.
this appears to be a mix of someone in Canada ordering product from a website that states clearly that we can not ship Burton product to Canada, coupled with an e-commerce store that is not sophisticated enough to block specific countries and tie that block with specific brands.
It appears that you placed the order without reading the information we provided on the page.
a simple mistake on your part.
In addition, our e-commerce software is not to the level that it restricts people from buying products that are disallowed by geographic destination. A failing on our part, but not a mistake. that’s why we attach the disclaimer on EVERY BURTON PRODUCT.

So, a mistake on your part, a failing on ours.
and a World Financial Crisis that throws everything topsy-turvey.
an exchange rate that swings wildly from day to day.

As Gayle explained, we were originally credited 218.79 and we gave back 218.79.
We made no money on this transaction, nor should we.

We will give you the difference in the exchange, 12.46, if it helps to keep you as a future customer.
i want to make clear that this is our mission: to attract and retain customers and earn their respect.
i am not offering this because i think we are vulnerable to a charge of fraud.
we are not.
as anyone who has traveled the world can attest, the charging of goods overseas on Day X and the processing of the debit on Day Y will always yield a minor discrepancy.

Which brings up this question: If the amount credited was 12 dollars in your favor, would you call and try to return it to us? If so, we would of course refuse it, because, AS STATED ABOVE, we we received and returned the same amount, in US dollars.

i know this seems like some guy in Seattle going on and on to make a point, a point that you’ve maybe already considered fully and decided long ago that i had no chance of changing your mind on.
that’s fine. i’m not writing this to change your mind.
i’m writing this because charges of ‘fraud” get our attention, and usually end with someone feeling ripped-off, even when there is no “fraud” committed. and i’m writing because it feels good. talking on the phone would not have been the same.

I will have Gayle contact you on Friday or Monday. she will need to get your credit card number, as we have no access to that in our payment gateway, for security reasons.
Again, i hope to keep you as a customer.
regards,
John Logic

Hello
Thank you for your reply. I have already resolved this matter with VISA and they have refunded me the difference.
As for your website, I can appreciate that you may not be a large enough company to warrant sophisticated filtering software. I went back to your website today and clicked on the Burton jacket that I was attempting to order and it now clearly states that you cannot purchase this if ordering from Canada. There was no “mistake on my part”. I assume that you have recently changed this wording because both my husband and myself scrutinized this closely to assure ourselves that we could in fact place this order. There was nothing on the product page to indicate that Burton could not be shipped to Canada. We both order items from US companies frequently and are aware of certain restrictions, which were clearly not on the site when we orignally placed the order. When looking at the International page it was obviously misleading because it says that you ship to US and Canada only, but no mention of restrictions.[THIS IS HARD TO BELIEVE. EVERY BURTON ITEM ON OUR WEBSITE HAS A DISCLAIMER ABOUT SHIPPING TO CANADA]
Anyway, this probably wouldn’t stop me from ordering from your site in the future. You may want to be made aware though that I have since found the same product in the US which shipped to me in a couple of days. When I phoned your company it was explained to me that Burton would not allow you to ship to Canada because they sell the same product here. I don’t know what makes your company different but Burton obviously doesn’t restrict everyone from selling their product to Canada.
If I over-reacted I apologize but I had spent many countless hours searching for this product and was very disappointed to learn 2 days later that my order was not valid.
Julie

julie thank you so much for taking the time to write to me.
i am happy that Visa resolved this for you. As i wrote, i would do that, but it’s nice to see the giants kick down some dough to the real people!
the restriction on Burton is a policy that comes direct from Burton. We ship to Canada everyday. Unfortunately, Burton, Oakley, and Nixon make us sign a contract saying that we won’t ship their product outside of the USA. whomever shipped you is in violation of their agreement with Burton. that’s fine, and that’s the risk they take, and in no way do i care to report them. we usually ask Canadian customers if they have a friend in the US we can ship to, and have it forwarded from there. i apologize if that was not suggested to you.

thank you again for writing. it means a lot to me.
sincerely,
John Logic

SO, CRISIS AVERTED! AND TIME SPENT GETTING ‘WILD’ ON THE COMPUTER! WOW! SOUND LIKE FUN?

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