I just had an interesting conversation with a pet food supplier. I ordered a case of 24 cans and a 17lb bag of prescription cat food on January 7th, which was delivered on January 9th. ($104) The following week I get an email saying they were getting ready to ship my order. I email them back and say "Don't do that, you already sent it". They don't bother to respond and a day later I receive another 17lb bag of food. Fortunately, I wasn't charge for it. I call and explain it to the customer service rep. You sent me an extra bag of food. No, we didn't. YES, you did. I'm looking at it. I got emails, tracking numbers, etc. After a bunch more back and forth I just tell her if they don't want it back and aren't going to charge me, I'll keep it. Thank you. $67. Score! Which all reminds me of a similar event 2-3 years ago. DH ordered something for $60 and was supposed to receive a 10% veterans discount, but didn't. We called the company and they said they'd process a refund for the 10%. I check my credit card account and a $600 credit shows up. I get all the paperwork together and call them. I explain it to a young man who tells me I am mistaken. Again, I say "I'm looking at it". This kid proceeds to tell me that I am not reading the decimal point correctly. I didn't bother to tell him that I had worked in banks and brokerage firms my entire life and KNOW all about decimal points and where they belong. We go back and forth for a while, I even give him the name of the person who did it. He knows that person and insists they did it right. Period. I documented the names, dates, etc., and told DH we'd keep the paperwork handy because they'll be calling. Nope. Never did. I was actually looking forward to receiving that call just to hear what they were going to say. I should have disputed it through the credit card company, but after having to adjust my books every month for a couple years I said screw it and added it in. I can understand companies arguing with you when you want money, but not when you're trying to give it back. Got any stories or am I the only one who benefits from the fact that companies don't make mistakes?
A hockey company sent us two goalie bags. Same deal, didn’t seem to get that they’d sent two. Score for us.
I love being sent double of an item. A friend of mine bought a new computer mouse and they sent him 4, lol. Scoreeeee.
I forgot this, but it's the opposite side of the story. I once ordered a keyboard from HP and they sent me an empty box. An empty freakin box. The fact that the box they shipped weighed considerably less than the item they were supposed to send didn't seem significant to them. I eventually got it, but big hassle. I refuse to buy anything HP now other than from a storefront where I can march it right back. Their service is very good when you're buying, but don't have a problem because those calls are routed elsewhere.
That reminds me of a situation we had in the mid 90's. Name of the company escapes me, but we had a PC built to our specs and delivered. Price IIRC was around $1500. We asked them to bill our credit card but after several bill periods it never appeared on the statement. Hubby calls customer service to inquire about it not once but three times. Each time their billing department just doesn't seem to be concerned that we hadn't been billed yet. One customer service rep completely unconcerned about correcting the situation suggested that maybe they billed someone else's credit card. To which my husband replied " Do you have their name? We would like to at least send them a Christmas card for paying for our purchase". We finally just gave up. Never did get billed for it. For awhile we were worried that they would finally catch their mistake and it would hit our card and put us over our limit. At some point we were given a new account number and knew they couldn't bill us. It's not that we didn't want to pay for it, but we simply couldn't get them to correct their own mistake.
I had ordered a printer from one of the big "shop from home" companies a while back. They shipped it but it got lost somewhere in the UPS network. After a bunch of messages back and forth over the course of a few weeks, they declared it lost and shipped a second one, which arrived with no issue. Because I didn't want the printer sitting outside an apartment building all day, I had UPS hold it for pickup. Well, a week after picking up the replacement printer, I get a message that there's a package waiting for me. It's the "lost" printer. I didn't pick it up, UPS returned it, and I could never convince the company that they should not have credited me back as I had one in hand. So, I got an $80 printer for free.
I've been on the other side...worked at a healthcare company and found we were constantly fulfilling duplicate orders. Patient orders one of something and they end up getting 2, sometimes 3. We were giving away half a million dollars of products every year. Kept trying to get permission to do something about it and was repeatedly shot down. I ended up leaving last year cause the place was clearly dysfunctional. Still looking for a new job, preferably at a company that cares about profits.
We once received an order and 3 duplicate orders of Christmas toys, etc. from Kohl's. We were only billed for one. Kohl's rep we contacted said to keep the additional orders as a gift for the inconvenience. The extra toys made great prizes for my students! On the opposite side of the coin, my bride opened the box of the new breast pump she'd bought online and found the box full of books and canned vegetables instead. The company did refund her money. There was likely a return scam going on earlier. Also we learned it's not easy to express milk with Oliver Twist and a can of green beans! RICHARD
Received a delivery at our warehouse years ago, one pallet that was destined for Walmart but delivered to us in error. It was about 35 packages, each one consisting of a bunch of foam panels that jigsaw together to make a soft play area on a kid's bedroom floor. No packing list but the skid did say Walmart...so I called 1-800-Walmart and explained the situation. I get passed onto 3-4 different people, explaining to each one that we have this pallet and they need to come pick it up. Finally the last guy says "just keep it", so we raffled them off to our employees
Remember kids, for a lot of jobs, it's only an interview...not an entrance exam. But I know this guy, not gonna name names or nothin', who had some medical supplies ordered via the interwebs. The shipment comes. And the very same shipment - same ORDER NUMBER AND INVOICE - comes a few days later. I called - uh, I mean, this guy I know - called up and wanted to know if he'd get another bill for the products. The voice-on-the-phone said they would correct it. Sure 'nuff, a few days later...the same products with the same ORDER NUMBER AND INVOICE sit in the mailbox! So now 'this guy' has a 270 day supply for the price of a 90-day supply. I'm sure he thought about placing another call and decided not to. Is that stealing? Or is the onus for correct accounting and inventory the responsibility of the company? At what point do I stop correcting your errors free of charge? Do I have to do everything myself? Where's my damn blood pressure medicine...
As opposed to the people that run mLife's HGS. They stated that they shipped two gift cards in one envelope. When I got the envelope, there was only one gift card. When I filed a claim against the missing gift card, they opened a claim with the shipper for the missing card. I told them that " . . . it couldn't have been the shipping company. You only shipped one envelope number, which you provided the tracking number for, and I received one envelope. The envelope only had one gift card in it!!" They finally realized their mistake and have filed a claim to get me the missing gift card.
Several years ago I was a member of the beer of the month club. One month I got 2 six packs instead of just one. Call the company and they say just keep it. This happened for 3 months before it got straightened out.
We seem to have more issues with government entities. Once when I got my real estate tax bill there was a $600 credit. I called City Hall and asked about it and they said that someone came in and asked that the money be applied to the upcoming tax bill. I didn't know that you could even do that. Since nobody I know would have any reason to do that, I am guessing that somebody applied it to the wrong account. The best one was the state government... Dh had a refund coming from a certain department and when it came, there were 22 envelopes and each one contained a check of different amounts---from $22.22 to $222.22---yep, all were in twos. He called and after waiting for a long time and being passed to at least 6 people, he hung up and said screw it. ....if they want it back, I will return it. That was about 6 years ago and there has never been a request for its return.
This happened to me once with a hotel. For many years, I traveled full time and essentially lived in hotels. Mostly billing was correct, but a few times I had to call to get something corrected and it was generally an easy fix. When I was paying for my own room (some weekends), I would take advantage of best price guarantees (BRG). For Starwood hotels how it worked back then was: (1) I book on their website; (2) I submit to SPG for a BRG; (3) SPG would communicate with the hotel to get the adjusted rate posted and credit me with 2,000 bonus points. I had a one night stay at an airport Aloft which should have been about $75 with the BRG. I checked out super early and went to airport to grab a flight - later that day when I got the invoice by mail they had only charged me $1. So I call the hotel and ask for accounting. Where I got the most condescending man ever. I explained that I had been charged the wrong rate. He insisted that it was impossible. And that it was my responsibility to check that the amount was correct before I left the hotel. And that there was absolutely no way to adjust the rate once it was posted. So, I decided I had done my duty and I'd take the essentially free room.
We had a company reunion golf outing every year and tried a new course. Everyone got a goody bag with golf balls, tees, and a beer ticket. According to the organizer, the beer ticket was good for a six pack. When we went to the snack bar to trade the tickets for beers they insisted the tickets were good for a TWELVE pack each. Damn, did we have a fun round of golf !
Ordered a new furniture set once - a sofa, loveseat and recliner. When it was delivered, the loveseat had a slash in the back of it so I rejected it. I called about a week later since they said they would be delivering a new one and heard crickets. They said they had to cancel the order since they didn’t have anymore of that item, so I asked about the sofa and recliner which I still have. They said everything has been recorded as returned, so I ended up with a free recliner and sofa.
I work for a pretty big corporation. In general, paying for an order to be shipped back, reexamined for defects , cleanliness, reentered into inventory ... that whole process can be more expensive that simply writing off the cost of the product itself.
I've had this happen once or twice over the years -- my philosophy is generally to try to correct the mistake, but I'm also not going to sit there on the phone for hours.