Something goofy this morning

[Wi-sunflower]

I'm curious how you would / do handle complaints about improper seeds.

I've had a few members here give me a heads-up that maybe some of my seeds are mixed or just plain wrong. So far those that have mentioned something that are TV members have been very nice about it and haven't really complained about it at all.

But I have had a person or 2 that have ordered seeds say something and get a bit ornery about it.

I got an email this morning that ended Thanks for nothing I won't buy from you again,

I checked my plantings for the variety in question ( produced a red instead of a yellow) and both plantings of at least 20 plants each had all yellow fruit.

I then checked for his order so I could offer to replace the seeds. It's slightly possible I took seeds out of the wrong bag of seeds, tho there was only 1 other variety in that folder of seeds, but it is a red. But after a search of my emails back to 2005 when I got this computer, there is no record of his email, or name. I also searched my trade list from this winter. I also hand searched my order print-outs for this year and about 1/2 of last year, way beyond when he supposedly bought the seeds.

No record of any purchase or trade from him at all.

I know I've read about other companies that have had complaints about seeds that didn't actually come from them. i'm sure as there are more orders and a company's name gets "out there" more and more people get confused about where stuff came from.

I did offer to send him seeds even tho it doesn't seem likely the original seeds came from me.

Maybe I can change his mind about ordering from me in the future.

Carol

[fortyonenorth]

Well you win some and you lose some - customers, that is. It sounds like you did and said all the right things. I would expect, at a minimum, that he could provide you with a date and order number to confirm that you, in fact, were the seed seller. I think your offer to replace the seeds was generous in light of the facts. An besides, we're talking about a few bucks for a packet of seeds - not the Hope Diamond. If he's really convinced that you are a scoundrel and wants to be a poop about it, there's really nothing else you can do.

[Wi-sunflower]

Yah, you really can't satisfy everyone no matter how hard you try.

As much as I would have liked to answer him harshly, I think I did OK with a reasonably decent answer.

I just hope he doesn't bad mouth me on some site like Dave's or some other such site.

I've had others that have left feedback comments at Google or eCrater that were clearly confused with another seller. But those also pass as others comment positively.

Carol

[Tania]

Carol,

I always assume that the customer is always right, and I must be wrong.

hence my response would be something along the lines of

'...thank you for alerting me about wrong/crossed seeds, I really appreciate it...'
...I understand and apologize for the inconvenience it caused you...

and

...Please let me know how can I make this up for you?...'

There is no way to ensure that there will be no 'bad publicity', and this is a risk we all take.

Tania

[amideutch]

Carol, if you don't have any record of a trade or transaction with this individual I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe he's pulling a fast one saying the seeds came from you and didn't hoping to get some free seeds from you. Ami

[Tania]

Originally Posted by amideutch

Carol, if you don't have any record of a trade or transaction with this individual I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe he's pulling a fast one saying the seeds came from you and didn't hoping to get some free seeds from you. Ami

Or, the person honestly thought that he bought the seed from you, and just forgot that they came from another place - it happens sometimes.

However, I agree with Tom that the message that you received was a bit too harsh - it would have troubled and upset me very much if I had received something like this.

Tania

My wife thought it would be fun to sell stuff on ebay. We were in the antique business at the time, so she started listing small antique items. She was always very good at describing an item and posting lots of photos. At first she enjoyed dealing with the customers and receiving comments from people who appreciated an old item they remembered from their childhood. Then she started getting hateful messages stating that she was just ripping people off and what they received was in no way what they thought they were bidding on. She didn't know what to do because her photos were excellent and her descriptions were accurate. She was very upset that people thought she was ripping them off. I finally advised her to stop messing with ebay. It simply wasn't worth the pain. I don't understand why some people choose to be rude and belligerent instead of simply explaining the problem and trying to work it out.

Ted

[OneoftheEarls]

Tania...

I think I lost or left a truck or at your place...can you have it shipped to me?



Earl

[Tania]

Originally Posted by OneoftheEarls

Tania...

I think I lost or left a truck or at your place...can you have it shipped to me?



Earl

The beauty of the seed business is that

1) vast majority, if not all of the customers are very honest people - they are tomato gardeners, after all!
2) I can still afford to send someone a few 'free' packets, even if they did not order anything from me.

I had only one case that still bugs me - when I thought that someone cheated on me. I do not accept international or US money orders as I have difficulties cashing these in Canada. One day I get a US postal money order, which I cannot cash, so I contact the customer explaining that I was expecting a check and cannot cash the money order, and that I will send it back. I get a response with apologies and a statement that they are sending me a check asap, and they really wanted seeds now, as it was getting too close to the planting time. So I sent both the seeds and the money order back, along with an email stating what I have done. I got a very nice email response thanking me and confirming the check was sent. 3 weeks later still no check, so I followed up advising the customer that possibly the check was lost in the mail and they should consider putting a stop on it, so nobody can cash it if it was stolen. I got another 'thank you' response advising that the original money order and the seeds arrived, and that they just put another check in the mail. Nothing arrived, and there were no more responses to my inquiries. It was a pretty large seed order, twice as large as my average.

I am having hard time to believe that a check from the same person got lost twice in the mail. No response could be explained, but a combination of these three things are quite rare.

Although I still could be wrong in my assumptions

Tania

[travis]

Had a friend who owned a pizza shop years ago. I was down there having a beer one day and chatting with him when a customer called and said he messed up their pizza by putting black olives on it when the request specifically was for no black olives.

Well my friend just hollered back into the kitchen to make a large beef and onion with no black olives, and we continued our friendly discussion.

About 20 minutes later these two hoodlums show up and retrieve their pizza, go back outside into a beat up black Cutlass and drive from the lot. When they got out into the road, we could see one of them apparently had opened up the pizza box to inspect the pizza and they both were pumping their clenched fists up and down in celebration that they had just scammed my friend out of a free pizza.

So he got up and checked his tickets for earlier in the day and never found any tickets that remotely matched the name or pizza order that those two hoods claimed he messed up.

Carol, write off this dope as a scammer and forget about it.

[ireilly]

Including scammers, there are just some people you really don't want to deal with.

Just the nature of humans in general. Too bad dogs can't place orders. Probably a lot fewer overt problems there.

[tjg911]

well carole you sure went to extreme lengths to check your records and the time spent to do it! you did all you could have done and then some, it was an honest mistake and sometimes mix ups occur.

i got seeds for a tomato that was supposed to be x but clearly wasn't. it is a huge disappointment because i am very fussy about what i grow so a mistake is wasted space in the garden that could have been used for something else i wanted to grow but did not have the space that the incorrect one took but it happens and you just accept it. now if i got the wrong seeds with any frequency from a seed company or person then i'd just stop getting seed from them.

we all make mistakes, i think the response you got was a bit too much. it is not like you purposefully sent the wrong seed!

tom

[Tania]

Carol,

I just re-read my very first post in this thread and it looks out of line to me - although I did not intend it that way.

So please forgive me if I came across completely arrogant and insensitive to your problem... All I meant to say was no matter what type of message I get, I always try to answer my best polite way (which makes me feel better, and hopefully it makes the upset customer feel a bit better too).

My apologies if I upset you with any of my comments.

Tania

[troad]

Carol,

Anyone who ends their letter with the "thanks again cra- I won't order" etc. before you have been given the opportunity to make it "right"(in the purchaser's eyes) is just not worth your concern. We are talking about tomato seeds here not someones bank account or whatever.

People that have been here at Tville any time at all have been able to see your posts and the effort you put forth to be one of the good people here(Tania too).
Cross them of the list of people you would ever think about again. They aren't worth it.

Len

[Wi-sunflower]

Thanks everyone that posted about this. None of your comments hurt at all and are more or less what I try to do most of the time.

That email came first thing in the morning after 3 tiring market days in a row. It upset me as I try to do the right thing and make orders right when I have the oportunity. Under conditions like that tho sometimes I will be snippy in a return email. I've learned to back off and wait til i have investigated a bit and have cooled down.

i did reply a bit too soon to that email but in a fairly reasonable way. I also replied later in the day after I had been in the field to see if I was getting red tomatoes or yellow. That was also after I had gone thru my orders. That email was factual and hopefully not snippy at all.

Like Tania said i can afford to send a few seed packs out even if they didn't originally order from me. I have had to eat postage aand resend on several occassions when a package comes back because the buyer didn't change their address in Google or PayPal. It's all part of doing business.

Right now, I've been very slow on orders this month due to all the farm work, markets and seed collecting. To make up for that I'm giving larger seed packs. I have plenty of seeds, just not enough time and energy these days.

As far as the eBay comments, that's par for the course there these days. Scammer city. I used to sell there for about 8 years. There is a good board for selling issues and alternate sites that I learned so much from when I was trying to expand away from eBay. Tell your wife that there are still decent customers out there, just not many at eBay any more. http://www.powersellersunite.com/

BTW, I haven't heard back from the "customer". Possibly too embarassed if he looked up the pack and saw he had the wrong company.

Hey, I've done the same thing. Swore I got the seeds from one company and when I actually found the package it was another company altogether.

Oh well, got to run. Another market today.

Carol