I’ll try to make this brief as possible,
I met a lady selling overnight oat packs at a farmers market this summer, tried them, and really liked them. Even though she’s located two towns over I’ve purchased from her website a couple times and she shipped them.
On Black Friday she had a sale and I bought $60 worth for $40. She shipped them and due to USPS incompetence they have been making an endless loop between 4 postal centers.
I e-mailed and let her know but made light of it just as an fyi and an eyeroll at the USPS.
She apologized and said she was shipping another box asap via priority mail and I would have it in one day.
I told her no worries and that if the first box showed up I would reimburse her for it and keep it.
USPS dropped the ball again and delayed package #2 by a day.
She apologized again and said she was going to hand deliver a 3rd package to my doorstep. She said if the other 2 happened to show up I should just keep them free of charge and Merry Christmas.
I found package #3 on my doorstep yesterday and today… you guessed it… USPS delivered the first two boxes.
If I took her up on her generosity she’d be out $120 worth of product and a priority shipping charge.
I don’t want to do that to a small business owner working out of their home that I patronize.
I will eventually use all the product since it doesn’t expire till April and my son and friend use it also.
So what would you consider fair reimbursement for the extra product I may or may not have purchased otherwise?
Full price of course. Personally I’d also pick up the Priority charge, since it wasn’t her fault. Maybe she can file against USPS and get that refunded.
Tell her what happened. Buy a gift card from her and give it to a friend, along with giving her some cookies or chocolate or whatever? Sounds like she’ll be OK but it’d be a nice gesture.
Scrupulously fair would be the full $120, but not 100% fair to you, as you said, you wouldn’t have ordered that much that soon.
I’d probably split the difference and give her $60, and MAKE SURE to put this whole story on her website, in the comments, or other feedback area. That is if we can trust her other customers to try not to take advantage of it of course. Otherwise, fill the site with good feedback and advertise with others for her!
As you say, you’ll use every bit of it. So pay full price for every bit of it. I do not see that getting it earlier than you would have bought it anyhow somehow entitles you to free product. The time value of money for even $120 over 3 or even 6 months is a few cents.
IMO she was the one who insisted on the expensive shipping, so I might choose to pay only whatever she normally charges for shipping. For each of the three orders you received.
If you want to leave a “tip”, that’d be on top of paying for all the product you’re going to use and all the shipping you asked for and received.
Aside, I gave my opinion on fairness upthread, but wanted to mention that the last 3 times I’ve used USPS (especially around the holidays) I’ve gotten nothing but arrogance, incompetence, and so forth. I’m not blaming it on any one element, but there’s zero responsibility there. So after the third “pay for priority and get mailbox level speeds” I switched to using UPS or other options for everything time sensitive. Sure, it costs more, but they just have not been able to deliver in the most literal sense.
That’s what I’d say. You say you can use it all. And it’s not really returnable as she may not be able to re-sell an edible item that’s been out of her custody.
If reimbursing full price means you can’t pay the rent, then I’d vote differently.
I had / have a bad habit of buying crap from Temu. Fun & cheap, but mostly cheap. They use lots of cheapo delivery companies. Who’s ever heard of Go-Go, Uni-Uni, or Lasership? Or another half dozen oddballs I saw just once.
Time after time those carriers would misdeliver or lose the package at the last mile. The tracking starting from the warehouse in Shenzhen would be timely and complete then end with “Delivered at [time]”. With no package anywhere I could find. And no picture. And no useable customer service at the shipping company.
I live in a secure building with a 24/7/365 doorman staff who receive and log all incoming packages for everyone. Porch piracy isn’t an issue here. Drivers not being able to find an address or ditching or stealing packages is.
After enough of those reports to Temu, their computer sighed and said “OK, we’ll use USPS for you. It’ll take longer, but it’ll get there.” And they were right. Almost everything from them comes USPS now. It takes a day or two more getting cross-country, but zero losses since.
That sounds great! If she is weird about being reimbursed, you can say, “Okay–but can I order another two shipments just like the first? Here’s payment for them. Oh look, they’re already here, great service, thanks so much!”
That’s some good advertising that she can’t buy. In fact, looking at the Events page, she’ll be in my city at a craft show this weekend. It’d be funny to stop at her booth just to tell how her story is being told in such a positive light.
Oh, granted, I’d take USPS over the no-names any day of the week. But if I’m shipping time-sensitive stuff from within the US to other US locations, I’m not going to pay USPS $22 to ship a box of homemade cookies “priority” and find it takes 5-6 days, instead of the 3 they say is “expected” (this was not around the holidays), I’ll pay UPS $28 for an ironclad (okay, strikes, massive weather, etc excepted) 2-3 days.