Late shipment of cancelled order

Factual Questions
1

I’m not sure what I should do in this situation, so I’m hoping for some advice from my fellow dopers.

I understand that you are not my lawyer, etc.

Last Monday I ordered some merchandise from an online vendor with my Visa card. I paid extra to have it sent by UPS Next Day Air.

On Tuesday I got an email saying that my order had shipped, along with a UPS tracking number. I went to the UPS site to track the order, but it was not there yet. By Tuesday evening, UPS showed the status as “Billing Information Received.” So far, par for the course.

All day Wednesday, and Thursday morning, the status still said, “Billing Information Recieved.”

Thursday morning I called the merchant’s customer service number. Before I even gave my order information, the agent told me they were having a software problem, where emails were sent, but the orders were not being shipped. She said a supervisor would call me right back.

All day Thursday, no one called back.

Friday morning, I called again. BTW, UPS still didn’t have the package. I repeated what had happened the day before, and the agent tried to get her supervisor on the line, but he was “unavailable”. She did give me the supervisor’s name. I told her at that time, that I should have my shipping charges refunded, and that if the order could not be guaranteed to go out that day, I wanted the order canceled. She assured me that the supervisor would call back. He didn’t.

Early Friday afternoon, I called again and asked to speak directly to the supervisor, by name. I got his voice mail. I left a detailed message asking him to call back, and reiterated my request to have the order canceled if it could not be shipped that day. No call back.

Late Friday afternoon, I sent a strongly worded email to the customer service dept., summarizing what I have stated above, and demanding that the order be canceled. I indicated in the email that I would contact my credit union and ask for the CC transaction to be reversed.

I contacted the credit union and they asked me to write a letter regarding the circumstances, which I did, and hand delivered to the person in charge of the VISA dept. She told me that the money would be credited back to my account Monday, and that the matter would be forwarded to VISA for their action.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon. I still have not heard one word from the customer service dept. My VISA transaction has been reversed. But, a check on the UPS web site shows that they now have the package, scheduled to be delivered tomorrow.

Legally, what am I required to do? I could refuse delivery, or I could keep the package and let the merchant fight it out with VISA over whether they get their money back.

Since I repeatedly requested that the order be canceled, 3 days before they shipped it, can I treat it the same as unsolicited merchandise?

2

I suspect that this falls under the heading of “the matter w[ill] be forwarded to VISA for their action.” Visa will look into the matter, determine that the goods were shipped and, if you do not return them, re-process the charge to you. If you were serious about telling the seller to cancel the order, I don’t think you can keep the stuff and your money, too. You have to mark it “not accepted” or “return to sender” or whatever UPS wants you to write on it and send it back.

3

Understand, that I’m not really trying to cheat the company, but I don’t feel they have really dealt fairly with me, either.

I still do want the merchandise, so I think I will accept it, and if Visa contacts the merchant and decides to charge me back, I’ll probably be OK with that (except I still don’t think I should pay for the express shipping).

On the other hand, I don’t feel a strong compulsion to call them immediately and say, “Hey guys, why don’t you run that charge through my Visa again, since you screwed up and shipped it after I told you not to.”

4

I had a similar incident w/ a cell phone, a few weeks ago. I changed my mind and cancelled within a couple of hours. The phone was delivered, by Fedex, a few days later, while I was not at home. I took it, unopened, to the local Fedex shipping center and they returned it, no charge to me. About a week later the credit showed up on my CC.
The only hassle was driving, about 20 miles round trip, to Fedex. I don’t know if they would have picked it up or not, I didn’t ask. I may also have been able to drop it at a Fedex franchize site, but I chose to go directly to the shipping center, to avoid anymore possible problems.

5

It’s too bad you’re honest, because this sounds like it came right out of my contracts textbook.

To start with, you’ve got all the parts of a contract:

**Offer ** - They put the item up for sale on their website. (They give you the ability to create a sales contract.)
**Acceptance ** - You order the merchandise. (You manifest your intent to be bound by their offer.)
**Your consideration ** - your authorization on your Visa card, and your promise to pay the bill when it came.
Their consideration - their promise to ship the merchandise.

BUT:

**Revocation ** - You cancelled your order on Friday, three days before their consideration was manifested.

Theoretically, there is no contract. Anything they send to you is yours. All you’d have to do is prove to Visa (or the court) that you cancelled your order before they shipped. If you kept the stuff, and the vendor sued, and your case ended up in the first-year Contracts textbook, you would totally end up keeping the stuff. (And Cardozo would write the dissenting opion.)

But!!! That’s just the Universe of Introductory Legal Theory, which often has no application to the Universe of Reality (or even the Universe of Legal Practice). In the Universe of Reality, there’s a pretty good chance the vendor will get Visa to un-reverse the charges.

6

Don’t do that, for one, their computers probably arn’t set up to put a charge through with out shipping merchendise out. Second, if there’s even a small amount of communications breakdown on their part, you’ll wind up getting charged twice.

If it were me, I would keep the goods and move on with life. If/when the charges get unreversed, and you still feel like it, you could ask for a refund on the shipping charges.

7

How about you do the right thing, rather than worrying about legalities? You reversed the charges so, in effect, didn’t pay for it. Not yours. It’s not ethical to take advantage of their incompetence.

Refuse delivery and order it from someone who deserves the business.

IMO

8

I think this would be a bit more accurate, no?

9

Legal technicalities and moral judgements aside, I like this suggestion best.

10

Actually, they probably go to great lengths to avoid promising anything solid about that. They’d promise that when it’s shipped, it’ll get a certain kind of shipping – but nothing about when they’ll ship it. (e.g. when you buy from Amazon, they say “usually ships within 1 business day,” or “usually ships immediately.”)

Oh, and keep yer grubby meathooks off er my quote tags!
And for the record, OP, if you’re actually looking for subjective advice, I’m with SailedTheOceanBlue here: the Right thing to do is to refuse delivery and perhaps try to get a refund on the shipping.

11

Even so, according to the confirmation email the OP recieved it had shipped last Tuesday. The OP seemed okay with the idea that it may take a day or two to ship, but he still wanted Next Day shipping to shave a few days off the time. The email said it shipped out on Tuesday and he is scheduled to get it 7 days later. At the very least he should be refunded the shipping cost. OTOH he spent a lot of time on the phone and a lot of aggrevation trying to get the shipment stopped, I say keep it, see what happens with the CC charges and go from there. Most likely they’ll be unreversed, but I woulnd’t feel bad if they weren’t.
If I went through all the BS he did trying to get the order stopped, I’d say to myself “ya know, I did all I could and I’m not going to put any more work into it.”
As for the CC charges, Visa will contact the seller and tell them that someone is trying to reverse the charges due to the item not being shipped, the seller will say (prove) the item has been shipped and the charges will be unreversed…most likely.

Oh, and this all could have been straightened out with one call or email from the seller saying there was a mixup and the item is on it’s way.

12

Well, as long as we’re discussing industry practices:
I am a third-party vendor under contract with about half a dozen major online venues.
On most of those, if I ship after the promised deadline and the customer complains about the late shipment, the online venues will reverse charges and let the customer keep the product.
That is to say, if I can’t ship on time to an Amazon [for example] customer, I must cancel the order ASAP. If I ship AFTER the 2-day shipment deadline, I stand to lose my product, my shipping money, and any funds promised to me by the buyer.

13

Was this really called for? The OP has made clear that he is not interested in cheating anybody.

14

Yes, but he also said:

and

and

He wants the product for nothing and wants to know if he can get away with it legally. I say (and you are entitled to your opinion as well) that what is legal is not always what is ethical. He says he’ll pay if they object with Visa, so there is a glimmer of ethics in there, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’ll take it for free if he can get away with it.

So to answer your question, yes, I do think it was called for.

15

That’s a reasonable suggestion. I hope you’ll consider this a reasonable response:

There is a very practical reason NOT to refuse delivery. Namely: who knows what the next chapter of this story will be?

In other words: Consider the level of incompetence which has been shown so far. If he does refuse delivery, he runs the risk that it will not end up returned properly. It could end up lost on someone’s desk, hiding in some corner of the mailroom, or who knows what. And then the company will unreverse the transaction, and he’ll have paid for it, without actually having it.

That’s why my opinion is to keep it. The worst that will happen is that he’ll end up paying for something which he does want and is willing to pay for, as indicated in post #3.

16

One would hope that UPS would have a record of a refused delivery.

17

Yeah, the ethical way is always the best way, though sometimes you have to dig down deep in your conscience to do it.

18

Notice I didn’t say being ethical was the easy thing to do. :smiley:

I very much admire those who do the right thing as it is frequently much more difficult (and often a PITA) to do so.