How to deal with Lazy People who are in Business?

[Bonnie Benshoof]

What do you do when you buy something from someone who ordered the wrong product and they expected you the consumer to return it?
I bought something from someone recently who owns one of these "Home based business" She ordered the wrong thing and expected me to do all the dirty work by putting it back in a new Manilla envelope, printing the receipt off the computer and putting the postage on it.How wrong is that? She happens to do business with me, so I kind of blew it off, but if you are going to operate a business, don't you think if you ordered the wrong thing, you the Proprieter should be responsible for thereturn not the consumer. What are your thoughts on this subject?

[Bonnie Benshoof]

I did handle this problem myself, grumbling the whole time of course, but after reading all of these plugs, I am going to tell her that it was a huge problem for me to do this, I agree she needs to know.
especially if she wants to grow in her business, at least tell her and learn from it and move on. I appreciate everyones advice!

[Rick Stanger]

So, you have received poor customer service from a business person.
Perhaps a solution would be to take care of the return yourself, and then under the pretext of giving her an update, tell her that you were happy to handle that return yourself because you were trying to help her with her home-based business. Then in a friendly way, tell her something along the lines of, "From one business person to another, you really should handle issues of that nature yourself. It good business practice because it shows your customers that their satisfaction is important to you, increasing the likelyhood that they will be repeat customers."
If you can cite an example where you provided good customer service to her in a similar situation, that might be helpful, too.
Your attitude will be the key to getiing your point across without alienating her as your customer.

-Rick

Because of increased maintenence costs, I am forced to increase the price of my opinion. Henceforth, my 2-cents worth will now cost three-cents. Thank you for understanding.

[Cindy Hartman]

I totally agree w/Lorraine! Whether she's a client or not, you still deserve good customer service. Too often today people take their customers for granted. Tony Scelzo has helped me make a few tough choices about who to do business with...let your dollars make the decision.

[Erik Deckers]

I think her request is not out of the ordinary. Maybe it is in the fact that she's local, and could just drive over and pick it up. But when you order something from a large company 1,000 miles away, this is the usual procedure. Maybe you kept the box, and so you're not using your own envelope, but they'll still ask you to print out the receipt.

Now the postage is a whole 'nother issue. Most companies have a return postage policy and will cover the postage. In those cases where the customer pays, they reimburse for the cost of the postage. I've done that a couple of times for customers: they paid the postage and we put a credit on their credit card for that amount. Other times, we had them ship it COD.

If you really want to get her, send it postage due. :-D

[Bonnie Benshoof]

I go back to customer service. I know I would have never asked someone who purchased something from me to go do all the dirty work, it is her business, she should have handled it in my book, but thanks for all the responses