"You got kicked off PERV?!  What in the world could you have done to get you kicked off a dimension like Perv?" - Aahz, to Skeeve (Robert Asprin)

From 2001 to 2008, Cindy and I ran one of the internet's most customer-friendly e-stores.  It was a great run while it lasted  ... :- )

We sold high-end, gently-used men's suits, buying Armani suits that had been worn once or twice for $20, and selling them for $50.  We sold, I don't know, 15,000 or 20,000 of these in six years, with a satisfaction rating of 99.1%.

Our store policies were simple:  the customer is always (A-L-W-A-Y-S) right.  It had a spot in the lining that we missed?  No problem, full refund, and we'll give you your shipping back -- both ways.  LOL.  Guess what?  We'll refund you 110% plus shipping BEFORE YOU SEND IT BACK.

We were verrrryyyyyyy careful to try to send out the super-sweetest blazers and suits.  We genuinely wanted our customers to be thrilled.  We wanted to make friends.  My wife wrapped the suits in colored crepe paper and tossed candy in the USPS box.  She thought of them as presents for friends.

Doesn't fit?  Send it back.  We'll e-refund you 5 minutes after we get your letter.

Don't like the color quite like you thought you would?  Your wife doesn't care for it?  You left it on the sofa and your doggy wet on it?  Send it back.   90 days later?  Send it back.  Here's your 110%, brother.

Does Nordstrom do that for you?  :- )

..............

It was a beautiful business:  we loved our customers, and they loved us.  The one thing is, we were swamped with orders like President Obama swamped with confetti at a DNC convention.  It's just my wife and me, so the shipping times ran 7-10 days.

Our auctions said this, clearly:  we are swamped, because we're selling you a $2,000 Oxxford suit for $89, and a lot of people want them.  It'll take a week or two to get there.  It would be a lot more than that from Nordstrom.  It would be months from Oxxford.  A week or two is the ship time here.  If it runs late, we'll give you 50% of your money back and you keep the suit.

95% of buyers judged this to be a neat deal.  Others, buying a suit for the first time and used to 1-day turnarounds on CD orders, complained via e-mail.  Our response?  Hey, very sorry, here's some $$$$ back and it's in the mail tomorrow.

..............

Though we got 99% positive ratings, the downfall was that (mostly new) buyers had our shipping time rated at 4.1 out of 5.0.  The appropriate response to this, we discovered, was to prevent us from doing e-business.  Banned from selling.

We sent everybody in the company :- ) e-mails trying to reason with them.  We called at least five decision-makers.  "When you rate a restaurant 4 of 5 stars, do you mean that they FAILED?", I asked one manager.  "Do customers who give us 4 stars want us BANNED?"  He swallowed hard, paused a long time, and said, "Me, personally, I don't think so."  Ah, well.

I'm a capitalist, but when one company owns all the telephone lines, a capitalist government does turn its head over in that direction.  People's lives can get seriously messed up.

Cheers,
Jeff

* footnote:  six months later, we sorted it out.  But that's another post... :- )