What do you do if you get extra items you didn't order from a company?
14I know here on Meh they had an uh-oh before where they shipped people IP cameras instead of LED Lights, common mistake.
If another company, ships you 2 of a higher dollar item ($200+) and you only ordered and were charged for 1, what do you do?
Do you tell them? Do you keep it?
Bank error in my favor?
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First of all, great monopoly pic!
I know what I should do, and want to do - But.........
@mfladd thus the dilemma. I'm hoping someone chimes in with a story of listening to the red guy, so I don't feel as bad for posing the question.
@mfladd I'm the guy who looks over at the little devil, who says, "Sure, go ahead, keep it!" Then I look over at the little angel and he says, "Meh, sounds good to me." J/K. IRL I had a short shipment from Amazon once, so I contacted and complained. They re-sent the entire shipment, not just what they had forgotten. I contacted them again, and they told me to just keep it. I guess their inventory was notified. I gave the extra Ukulele to my niece. http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002GLMEK
@TaRDy I doubt any of the devil listeners will post their experience. Angel 0:-) for conscience and karma call the company and tell them. See what they say. Devil }:-) Yea, then if they want one back they both have the same billing slips so keep the nicer one. Angel and Devil: We're good with that. ;)
@TaRDy I went to UPS once some years ago to pick up a monitor I’d bought on Ubid. They brought out two large boxes. I told them I was only expecting one thing, but they insisted they were both mine. I figured maybe it came with a separate stand or something, this was a freaking huge old fashioned box monitor. Got them home and opened them, the second box was a super nice printer. Looked at the box, but no name or address, just UPS codes. Tried to look at the Ubid auction to see if it was a bundle, which were pretty common, but it had taken a couple of weeks to deliver and the auction was gone from my account. I really figured it was about 75% likely that the printer wasn’t supposed to be mine, but I felt I’d done my due diligence when I told UPS it wasn’t mine when I picked it up. Ubid was kind of a business version of Ebay, without labels I had no way of knowing who it had come from or was supposed to go to. Surrendered and plugged in the printer, went and bought some photo paper and printed out a bunch of top quality photos. A few days later UPS calls and says it was given to me in error and they’re coming by to pick it up, then acts all offended that I’d actually used it when I tell them they need to give me time to disconnect and rebox it.
I spent too many years running my own shop not to tell them. Chalk up one for the Universal Bank of Karma.
(edit: didn't know that was a thing)
(edit 2: is every thing a thing?)
@KDemo if the Internet has taught us anything it's that everything is a thing.
Contact the seller, inform them, and tell them they can have it back if they send a UPS call tag/label or other equivalent that will pick up at my work address. It is the honorable thing; they can decide if its worth the trouble and cost but I won't pay to ship it back.
Not one instant of hesitation - contact them and ask what they want done with their inventory.
@RedOak i did just that and they said they could send me a call tag and that i can pay for the return and they will give me a credit for the shipping to use at a later date. your thoughts
@GiftShopper I’m not sure what to make of you… normally when a thread this old gets dragged up from the depths of time I think advertising spambot, especially when done by a just-registered account, but your post isn’t advertising anything or linking anywhere so I’m at a complete loss… so um… hello!
On the topic of your post, tell them they can pay for the shipping. They made the error, not you. Issuing you with a credit is to their benefit, not yours, because it brings you back to shop with them again. If they want their inventory back, it behooves them to spend their money to get it shipped back. You’re already giving them your time (which has monetary value really) and effort to make them aware of the issue and will doubtless be giving them more time and effort getting the thing shipped back once they get a label paid for and get it to you, there’s no reasonable reason why you should also pay to ship the thing for them.
@GiftShopper respectfully, I don’t believe you. No sane seller would expect the recipient of the mis-shipped item to pay to have it shipped back.
But you got two folks to respond to you, so congrats on that.
“GiftShopper joined us 1 day ago”
Tag @jbartus
@RedOak Frankly I find impossible to believe too!! I have never had anything like this happen to me before. This is the first time I have ever reached out to a blog. Just couldn’t believe what they were saying, so now I will let them know they can have it back at their expense up front and they need to arrange for pick up, Thanks to all of you for your responses.
@RedOak plenty of insane sellers out there. Also on the one day ago bit, they actually joined today. It’s a long standing display bug that I just assume has been given"won’t fix" status due to the limited impact. That said I’ll tag @shawn just in case they somehow missed it.
I always assumed that when a cashier makes a mistake in my favour the most moral thing is to point it out so I'm charged the right amount... but then I was told by someone who worked in a shop that errors like that count against the cashier and that I could seriously fuck up someone's job by doing the "right" thing. Of course a $200 item is a whole different ballgame than getting an extra avocado or whatever, but there's still the risk of getting a warehouse packer in some deep shit over a small mistake. The morals of it are a lot tricker than at first glance.
@Starblind I agree, that's why this dilemma is your fault. The best/worst part is, the second item was a more expensive and nicer model, yet the packing slip and tracking numbers were the same, 2 different boxes.
@TaRDy the goat blame card - nice! you may have been the first this month to play it.
@Starblind Just think of the flip side, nobody does the "right" thing and the company loses a lot of money through the errors of said person. Eventually someone in accounting figures it out and that person is fired (out of a cannon, into the sun), or worse your favorite grocer goes out of business. Mistakes are ok, as long as you learn from them but if you don't know you're making them then how can you improve?
@Starblind I know some places make the person whose drawer is short makes the cashier pay for the short. I’d tell them (and have done so in the past).
We always let them know. Lots of times they say "just keep it", other times they want it back.
Last month we went shopping at CostCo and bought two bags of cat food. On the way out to the car, I was checking over the receipt and noticed they'd only charged for one and said something to my husband. He said "you know what you have to do".
And back into the store I went with the receipt and paid for the second bag of food.
@lisaviolet so the cashier screwed up and the person checking on the way out missed it too?
@ThatsHeadly They're really just there to scare people out of shoplifting. I don't think half of them can even count...
@ThatsHeadly Seems like they pick the most expensive-looking thing in the cart and make sure it's on the receipt.
@ThatsHeadly Yep. This was the first time in over twenty years this happened. Someone has always caught it in the past.
@lisaviolet that trait, at least, indicates you found a gem of a husband.
@lisaviolet we've gotten to know the door-checkers at both our main Costco and SAMs. It totally depends on who is checking. Some are more interested in a smile, whilst one careful lady seems to count every item in the cart. Their carefulness also seems directly associated with the length of the line attempting to leave the store.
@RedOak It is nice to marry someone with many the same core values, that's for sure.
@lisaviolet yep. A good and happy marriage requires effort and shared values make things go a lot smoother!
Got a second delivery of a several hundred dollar wine delivery once. Doing the right thing was never harder…
What if.... the company took their jolly good time sending out the paid and charged item. Over a month of where is my stuff that ive already paid for. Terrible customer service, rudeness, etc. Finally at the end of it all, they accidentally send double. Approx value $175.
@ongware You earned it.
@ongware My referenced experience was nothing like that, they sent the extra wine because something was boogered up with tracking and they thought I never got it. Actually overnighted it. So that level of CS, it's a no-brainer… they treat you well, you treat them well. What you're positing, well, I'm not above admitting to being selfish enough where that would be very difficult. If shitty CS is wasting my time and not even trying… where is my motivation to try? Why waste my time for them when they've already wasted my time for them? Not that it magically becomes ethical, but there does come a point where it is very, very hard to care.
Legally anything extra they send you is yours, mistake or whatever. Ethically, do the right thing.
Ordered a $60 table saw jig to cut coves with and received a $450 router motor. Contacted the vendor and asked if they could misroute the table too. Instead they sent a return slip and a $20 gift certificate.
/giphy LOL
@Mehrocco_Mole
So, in theory, and usually in practice, I do the right thing. The more expensive the item is, the more likely I am to do the right thing. But, customer experience leading up to that point plays into my decision, whether I want it to or not.
On a smaller scale, I actually chose the red guy last night. I placed a pizza order online last night through Dominos. (Of the two that deliver here, they're the best in terms of pizza, price, and service.) I ordered 5 pizzas (3 pepperoni and bacon, 1 pepperoni and sausage, and 1 olives and mushrooms for my husband) and 2 orders of breadsticks. Ten minutes after I place my order they call me and tell me they're out of mushrooms. Grrr So, I replace that pizza with a pepperoni and sausage. Half an hour after that, delivery guy pulls up and starts pulling out my pizzas. Looks a little horrified when he looks at my receipt. He only has two pizzas. When he pulled up to the drive-thru window, they only gave him a small part of my order and sent him on. So, he gives me two of my pizzas and says he'll be back with the rest. I take them up and let the kids start eating and go back out to wait for him. When he gets back I take the order and don't really pay attention to it until after I eat. That's when I realize they gave me an extra pepperoni and bacon pizza. I decided I deserved it at that point. If you read all this, you probably deserve one, too.
@PurplePawprints Your husband has terrible taste in pizzas.
Oddly enough, one of our doctors bought lunch for us last Friday. I didn't have a patient so I was asked to go pick up the 5 pizzas that were ordered. I was handed 6 pizzas but didn't even realize it until I got across the parking lot to put them in my car. We order enough from that shop (who has screwed up previously) that I wasn't about to waste more of my valuable lunch time to take it back.
@cinoclav I think it's his way of guaranteeing that he won't have to share. Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one to keep the free pizza.
I was also annoyed that they didn't do a birthday message for my kid or a message that I asked for when I ordered the week before. I see all the pics online about pizza places drawing on the boxes, but they don't do that here.
@PurplePawprints I definitely deserve an extra pizza. ;-) Great story though.
@PurplePawprints another way to assure no sharing - be the only meat eater in your family. And bonus points when meat eaters are in the room - be a cheese-detester, ordering the pizza minus cheese!
@RedOak My mom, who in her last years lived on beer (depressed, self medicating, it ended up killing her), wouldn't have any in the refrigerator. That way she could offer somebody one knowing they'd decline. Left more for her.
@lisaviolet sorry to learn that.
@RedOak It was her choice. Towards the end I think she was ready to be helped, but the damage to her brain was too much. Once she was in a place where she couldn't have her beer and cigarettes, she pretty much gave up. Her short term memory was crap (she didn't remember me being there the day before - for six weeks). She didn't remember my phone number. But she called one of her nieces in Ireland from the facility phone (which I didn't find out until I notified my cousins of my mom's passing). That simply amazed me. .
The brain. It's magic....
@lisaviolet that it is. I wish we understood it better. Lost my dad to Parkinson's two years ago two days ago.
@RedOak Oh, I'm sorry for your loss.... (((((RedOak)))))
@lisaviolet I don't know how I missed this earlier. My dad has been in that same 'place' for close to ten years. He has alcohol-induced dementia which has also destroyed his short-term memory. People just don't realize the damage of long-term, excessive alcohol usage. I'm his guardian now and he's had to be in a facility for the last ten years because he can't live alone and he'd be dead by now otherwise. I think he'd have preferred that outcome to this though....
@PurplePawprints She had moments of lucidity and I think it was during those periods that she decided she did not want to live. She quit eating. She started hiding her food if they didn't watch her eat. I'd find it during my visits.
On February 20, 2008, I went in to visit her. One of the nurses told me "she's just playing you, she's fine when you're not around". That night, they called to let me know she'd passed away (she had a DNR).
Fifty years to the day she became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Ten years is a long time. My mom was in the facility for six weeks. You are a wonderful, caring child to still advocate for him.
Other than my pizza story above I generally believe in karma, especially with an expensive item. However... I may consider calling the company, telling them what happened and asking if maybe they'd let me keep the nicer product in exchange for my sending back the original and crediting back the more expensive one. Worth a shot and at least you would know you got the little bonus out of it with their approval.
Tell them. It's the right thing to do. You don't need the negative karma that brings. You do the right thing and hope that if it's someday your mistake, that someone does the right thing for you.
I always try to do the right thing but sometimes the merchant makes it difficult.
One time, at Walmart, I paid cash for a $7 dollar item and gave the cashier a $10 bill. She gave me $13 in change. After I pointed out the error, she argued with me telling me that I was wrong and she did not make a mistake. My response was to say "Thank you" and walk away.
Then at a bodybuilding website, if you order over a certain minimum, they send you a small towel for free. When I say small, I mean very small. About 10" x 8". Really a piece of crap. Anyway, when I got my order, there were 10 towels included. I called the company and they did want the 9 extras back. I asked them to send me a label and they refused. They wanted me to pay for return shipping and I refused. Then the CS rep called me a thief because I told them I'm keeping them until they come up with a way for me to send them back without me having to pay anything extra. He threatened to charge my credit card for the 9 towels. I advised him that would be a very easy chargeback due to them being a MOTO merchant and not having any documented order for them (I worked for the credit card industry for 11 of my 25 years banking experience). He again called me a thief so I politely gave him my phone number and said the ball was in their court and to call me if they change their mind and I hung up. I am not going to pay for someone else's mistake. Never heard back from them.
I ordered a bluetooth keyboard from meh and received two instead. Contacted customer service and they said to keep the extra one. Best CS experience ever!
@cengland0 roid rage maybe?
@sammydog01 Nope. Being a vegetarian, I bought a lot of soy protein from them.
@cengland0 I meant the CS rep, not you. You seem like a completely balanced individual.
I had an order shipped to me once, the company reversed the order number of someone elses and it matched mine from a week previous. It sat on my front deck a couple days in the snow, cause it was delivered as it was snowing and I didn't look cause not expecting anything.Kid (22 yr old) tells me my stuff is here opened it cause the box was falling apart. Called the place asked them what to do, they send a label, but I tell them I need some kind of heavy duty box to ship it back cause the box was all damaged.(item was like 40lbs. I don't keep boxes I recycle) They say ok we'll figure something out. still haven't heard anything after a year.....guess they didn't want their $500 worth of stuff
@padragon And you leave us hanging without telling us what it was?
@padragon it was ammo, my caliber and everything. been having fun shooting
I went through the drive-thru at McDonald's the other day and ordered a medium size quarter pounder combo with a root beer. They handed me a large root beer and my sack o' food. I figured, "Meh, probably charged me for a large. No bigz." I get home to find I had been given the wrong order! "You bastards!" But wait... this is a 20 piece chicken McNugz meal with large fry! Checking the receipt I was only charged for the medium burger meal. Winner! They even gave me sweet n sour sauce like I like. The only thing that could have made this more awesome was if they had given me extra straws in the bag.
I kept the extra/wrong stuff for myself and didn't tell a sole until this day.
@medz In this case, if you took the time to bring that food back and tried to correct the issue, they would have just thrown it all away so this is probably the only scenario that I can see in keeping the extra and it being okay.
@cengland0 I have gotten extra food at restaurants. They never want it back unless the plate hasn't left the servers hand yet. Fast food restaurants never want it back. Decades ago, when I sometimes ate at McDonalds, they would give out coupons for free soft serve cones whenever they screwed up an order. (Might have been just one owner did that.)
@hamjudo Every time I've returned a wrong order to a fast food restaurant they've taken the wrong food back and thrown it in the trash. :-/
@medz as often as they short me when i'm in too much a hurry to correct it, i rarely give back extra food
Not only do I want to and usually do the right thing, I have a conscience which, partly by birth and partly bred by family and the steroids of pentecostal-holiness fundamentalism (which still haunts me, though I've done much to try to kill it), will mercilessly torment me, sometimes for months and years after. And my experience is that it usually, in fact, pays off to do the right thing. Fuck karma; it usually pays off in the immediate context, in good will, if not always manifest generosity from the folks I declined to screw over. Which, yeah, I often feel guilty about the fact that I've benefited by my ostentatious dogooderness.
I will even extend irrational effort (and thus magnify my personal cost) to rectify an error, just so I can appease that bastard conscience. "In your face, bitch; you can't hold this one over my head."
But sometimes--especially after I've made one, or two or three attempts to make things "right"--a combination of poor customer service, diminishing returns, total pointlessness from a utilitarian perspective, et al. will compel me to just give up.
And there have been a few times I've simply done the wrong thing (I'm sure I convinced myself that the overall cost-benefit was on my side); that's how I know about that bastard of a conscience.
Oh, and food service: Honestly, most places it's a bit of a tossup whether you'll actually get what you asked for, so those times when they give you a little more or a little different and it's better are more than made up for by the times you got shafted. And what, are they gonna re-inventory that cooked food? Yeah, that'd be fucked up.
For me, it is case by case. If I think that the company in question is a greedy whore-monger then I might keep it. If it is a beloved mom and pop or a respectable establishment or if a particular person's ass is on the line I will "do the right thing."
I was working retail years ago. I went to the bank to exchange big bills for small bills. I got six hundred dollars extra. I returned it before the end of the shift, otherwise the teller would have lost her job. I always got great service at that bank branch after that.
Most of the errors are much smaller. Back when Meh's shipping department wasn't as efficient, Meh double shipped Vermont American tools and some other cheap stuff. Both times, Meh said I could keep the extra. I got a few dollars worth of extra 1000 micron optical fiber once. They let me keep that too.
It seems I always come out ahead in some way when I point out mistakes in my favor. So far, honesty has always been a win.
@hamjudo Way back when, on payday I used to go to a grocery store on the way home from work. I'd buy my groceries and pay for it with my paycheck and get change.
I never counted the change right there, I'd wait until I was home and the groceries were put away. So, groceries put away, I count the change. She gave me the amount of my check and didn't pay for the groceries. I call the store. She'd already gone home. I left my number, she called the next day and was really pretty rude about the whole thing. I drove the twenty miles to her store and gave her what I owed, but I was kind of annoyed that she wasn't nicer.
One time, back in the early 70's, I found $60 outside the post office. The three bills were rolled up and tied with a rubber band. This is when I lived in Gaeta, Italy.
So I brought the money home and showed my parents. I was a young teenager at the time. My parents said that it was a lot of money -- probably someone's entire paycheck and I should try to find the rightful owner of the cash.
I brought it to the post office and gave the money to the teller and explained what happened. Said if someone was looking for it that this was their money. I left my name with them so if nobody claimed it within a week, I will get the money back. This was in Italy, remember, so we didn't have a phone. It was too expensive of a luxury to have phones over there during that decade.
I went back a week later and asked about it and was told the money was claimed. Then a sinking feeling in my heart occurred. How did I know he wasn't telling me a lie and kept the money for himself? There was no way to prove it one way or another. I felt I was taken advantage of due my inexperience and age.
Now that I'm older and wiser, I would handle this totally different and not rely on a 3rd party's honesty to make sure it gets to the rightful owner.
@cengland0 Something similar happend to me at Walgreens. We were leaving the store and I found a $50 bill. I told the manager I found some money on the floor, gave him my name and phone number and said to call me if someone came in and said they dropped money. I didn't tell him how much it was. I knew if I gave him the $ it would never make it to the rightful owner even if he/she came back. I don't trust anyone. This way, if someone came back and had the correct amount, it was the rightful owner. I never got a call. Kept 1/2 and put 1/2 in the basket at church.
@wildmomo There is probably a minimum dollar amount where I would just keep the money and not say anything. In the 70's, $60 was a lot of money. If I found that much today, would I keep it? Hmmm.... I know if I found $10, I would keep it. If I found $1,000 I would tell someone. So where is the line based on the value of money today?
Suppose I have to wait until I find a boat load of money again before I'll know.
It depends.
I actually had amacrap send me something I totally didn't order. I told them to send me a return label, by mail, i would not print one out, nor would i take the item to the post office.
this was not a mishipment, this was i didn't order a thing and they sent it to me. I offered to send it back as long as it wasn't an inconvenience.
all the offered was me to print a label and take it to the post office. They never got it back.
I fall into the "Depends on the cost and the merchant: camp.
Though Williams Sonoma can go right to Hell after mis-shipping me cocoa mix instead of peppermint bark, then scheduling a UPS pick-up to my house with no box provided.
So the moral of the story is if you got some slightly-dented cocoa mix from W-S, check for razors.
I got an extra Galaxy S3 in the mail from TMobile a couple years ago (when they were worth big $$$). I ordered one and received a second one a few days after the receiving the first. After calling about it, the lady on the other line admitted that they had absolutely no record of the serial number on the second one I received, but they still asked that I send it back. I almost wish I had just kept my mouth shut :)
Amazon sent me a 2000 dollar gaming laptop instead of the 400 dollar one I ordered. I called them and confirmed the sku on the box and told them that the laptop was different. CS told me they had no record of that gaming laptop and to keep it. They apologized that I had to contact them about this and even credited my account 50 dollars.
@xarous that totally sounds like Amazon. They seem to be blinded by striving for world e-commerce dominance and have little interest in ever doing much more than breaking even on the bottom line!
I wish meh would send me something free :/ amaxon send me like 500 buvks worth of shit . One shirt was thw wrong color .i complained I recieved all the same stuff again ... told them and i got a refund . Um ... i stopped telling them shit :/
I always tell the business, but their attitude determines how far I'll go to make it right.
Once at my bank (a local credit union where the tellers all know me by name) the atm outside gave me an extra $20. I took it in to them and they were grateful. I figure if the atm ever shorts me $20 they will believe it.
Another time at my local Wal-Mart, I was buying several items including two large bags of dog food, probably $50 worth. It was some holiday, maybe New Year's Eve, and the store was crazy. The cashier rang up all the regular size items on the conveyor belt, but didn't get her gun and scan the dog food. She tells me my total and I tell her "I also have this dog food here that you didn't scan". She gives me a blank look and restates my total. I say "You didn't scan this dog food" and she smacks her lips with attitude and again states my total. I just said thank you and swiped my card and enjoyed feeding my dogs free food. My best guess was that she was angry about working the holiday, or being held past when she was supposed to get off, and she was somehow doing her part to get even.
And once this upstart e-commerce experiment sent me eleventy 39" TVs I didn't order by air freight. I took pictures and alerted them but they let me keep them. I'm still giving TVs away, but I continue to shop at that site every day.
Actually, at least at big websites, keep the free stuff is a common response. Several people have cited Amazon incidents already in this thread, and I remember articles about a couple of people ordering new ipads from Best Buy, being sent cases of 5 units, and being told to keep the extras when they contacted customer service to report the error.
@djslack my policy is similar to yours. I always try to inform if there is an error, I try twice. After that it is not my problem, I don't have to feel guilty if they employ stupid people. I also don't stop if I set off the sensors on the way out -- I don't steal, your employees failed to their job. They can chase me if they care enough :)
Generally, I contact them and let them decide how to handle it. I'm not going to put a lot of effort or expense into fixing their mistake, but I'm willing to cooperate within reason. If they provide a prepaid shipping label, I'm willing to drop the package at the UPS store on the way to work. Etc.
Cost is also a factor. If I buy twenty $1 items and receive twenty one, it's not worth my time. I have taken the same approach when I was shorted and only received nineteen units, so fair is fair.
Finally, there are companies where I would shut up and keep the booty. For example, AT&T owes me a $75 rebate. I contacted support three times over a six month period but to this day I still haven't received the rebate. If AT&T accidentally sent me an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6, I would enjoy the karmic balancing with a clear conscience.
According the the Federal Trade Commission, you have NO obligation to do anything. However, I always call the seller to ask if they want to send a return label just to get some Karma points. Interestingly, I was mistakenly sent a yoga mat from Amazon and it took me over 20 minutes on the phone to return their item. I learned my lesson....the mat was worth under $15 but they wanted it back anyway..........I should have charged them for my time :-)
@Joelmw's story reminded me of a conundrum I faced...
Many years ago in youth, I bought and had installed several accessories for my truck. I don't recall the exact $ but the correct total bill would have probably been something like $600-700.
A year later was I was going through some papers and noticed the invoice did not include a $200 accessory.
Procrastination meant that even tho I drove by that small business probably once every couple months, I never seemed to have the invoice with me so I could take corrective action.
When my conscience finally steered me to go back and make it right, the business had closed. Young and dumb. Still bothers me a bit decades later. And steers me to do the right thing today.
It's hard to find the time to correct someone else's mistake unless it negatively impacted you. You shouldn't feel bad about it. It's not like you left the store knowing the receipt was wrong. You would have had it corrected then and there if that was the case. Even a bank wouldn't give you back money it incorrectly took from your account after a period of time. They should have caught their own error through proper auditing procedures instead of relying on you to find an error a year later.
The Popeyes on the way home from work gets my order wrong more often than not, and I am not exaggerating one bit. It's to the point that when I order from the drive through I check it I front of them before I pull away. Despite the inconvenience I still go there because when I go inside with my receipt to complain that I ordered 5 strips instead of wings, they let me keep the wings and give me 7 strips to apologize.
This is a tangent topic I know, related to the free fast food topic above...
@mehdaf we avoid drive-thru even if we are taking out. Many fast food places screw orders up too often. We go inside to order.
@mehdaf I am mad for Taco Cabana refried beans (made with bacon grease, those demons). I eat there quite often, and on occasion they will give me charro beans or black beans instead (which are perfectly nice but not what I want), so I always check in-store. They always offer to remake the plate, and are more than happy to just give me an extra side of refried instead.
If it's a small dollar item it probably costs more to return it and I just keep it. If they are already aware of the error and send a return label I'll make sure it gets returned. I've received two items when I ordered one (under $3) and a stick of deodorant I didn't order at all. I wasn't going to waste my time contacting them as I knew they wouldn't have me send them back.
@triciad If it's not obvious, my comment is based on online ordering.
Another amacrap moment. One of the ladies at work ordered these really cheap (inexpensive) earrings. It was under $5, I think closer to $1 and with prime free to ship. She got 5 pair of them instead of 1. Several of us enjoy those earrings now.
Some companies, I agree, I don't feel at all sorry for when the mess up.
My recollection of the specifics is a bit hazy, but..
Years ago when woot was still woot, a friend ordered three hard drives. One of the drives arrived DOA and contacted customer care. They shipped him out three replacements, then a few days later sent him three more.
For whatever reason, he contacted them again and said "hey, thanks for the drives, but one of these is dead too", and that turned in to another drive being sent.
When I told him a while back about meh (and the folks behind it), he said "Call me if there's every any hard drives for sale".
I just bought the damn camera.
Keep it, move out of state and lay low for a few months.
Last year I ordered a bunch of deck furniture from Home Depot. About half of the items were purchased in-store, the remaining ordered and scheduled delivery. The delivery folks left it outside (as instructed) but accidentally left a box that wasn’t part of the order (literally had someone else’s address on it).
I called HD and they asked if I would bring it back to the store. I explained that it was the tile tabletop for a table I didn’t order and it weights well over 100 pounds. I’m not going to break my back for your mistake, can you just send the delivery folks back to claim it?
He paused for about 30 seconds and literally said, “Congratulations, you have yourself a free tile tabletop”. But I don’t want it, I told him. He said I can dispose of it as I see fit.
I kept in in my garage for while wondering how I’m going to deal with this monstrosity. In the end, I put it out (still in box) on my curb with a sign that read “FREE TILE”. It was gone by the time I got home from work that day.
@ACraigL I’d have made me a table.
@moondrake Yeah, not so easy… first off I just bought a table, and this one wouldn’t match anything. Mostly it was pre-cut fitted tile for the table I didn’t have. I could have done something with it, but didn’t have the interest in doing so, especially after all the shopping, unpacking and building of the furniture I wanted in the first place.
I’m sure it found a good home.
I let them know. I’d do the same if I was shortchanged.
I offer to send it back if they send me via snail mail a USPS return postage sticker with pre-arrange will call.
I won’t print one out and I won’t go to the post office to drop it off.
Legally it’s yours.
In August I ordered a Go Rhino safari rack for the Blazer. 5 feet x 4 feet, about 50lbs. It was drop shipped from the manufacturer via UPS. UPS took the term “drop shipping” a bit too literally. The package arrived beat AF.
I contacted the seller. They arranged a replacement, told me UPS would come collect the damaged rack. 3 weeks later, replacement rack arrived… beat AF. I tried to get the UPS driver to take the first one with him, but he said he can’t, and gave me a phone number to call. I called, got the runaround, and eventually told “since you aren’t our customer, we can’t really help you”. So I called the vendor I ordered from. They told me UPS would contact me in a day or two.
Another replacement arranged, and I suggested I’d be happy to pay a little extra to have the rack properly padded and packaged. “Not necessary, we’ve contacted Go Rhino and included special instructions to pad and double-box your order.”
Last week the THIRD rack arrived. You guessed it… no special packaging, and beat AF.
I now have three of these racks in the garage and UPS doesn’t seem to have any interest at all in collecting them. I tried the vendor again, got the same “UPS will contact you in a few days” bit.
All 3 are functional, with damage being cosmetic. Dents and dings, scratches, etc. But still quite capable of performing the functions it was designed for. I just don’t want a beat down rack permanently affixed to my lovely Blazer.
I figured I’d give UPS another 4 weeks before I disposition them. Probably keep the best of the 3 and sell the others on Craigslist or something. I can’t be havin’ ‘em gob up my garage forever, innit?
@ruouttaurmind neat rack. I just plopped a Thule Canyon XT on my Crosstrek.
@jbartus
Canyon XT and Go Rhino SR10 were both on my radar. It came down to whichever I located at the best price. Found the large (60x40) SR10 with bright aluminum ferings at Summit Racing for $238 incl. shipping.
Of course now that I know Go Rhino is incapable of properly packaging a rack for transit, I’m back in the hunt for the Thule at a price.
@ruouttaurmind to be fair the issue is UPS not Go Rhino. Even my Thule rack got banged about a bit in shipping, one of the tube ends of the halves is very slightly out of round due to mishandling.
@jbartus Perhaps shared blame. UPS handled the packages roughly, but Go Rhino uses a single layer cardboard box and absolutely zero padding of any kind. The racks are oversized, and weigh about 50lbs. Ideally they would use heavy cardboard, and the corners would be padded.
If I received one damaged, even two I’d be pointing to UPS. But three in a row? Isn’t this indicative the packaging isn’t appropriate for common carrier transport systems?
The confusing bit to me: I also purchased Go Rhino nerf bars and a grill/brush guard. Both items were packed so securely it was a chore to open and unpack them. Go figure.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Half a dozen or so dents like this on each rack, with the powder coating cracked and flaking off in several spots.
@ruouttaurmind that’s a real shame.
@jbartus Last weekend eBay had a bonus eBay Bucks offer. As I was browsing, one of the “suggested items based on your browsing history” was the Go Rhino rack I had received so many damaged times.
I knew better, but the price was $70 lower than the “bargain price” I paid before. Plus an additional $20 in eBay Bucks. I threw the dice
and tried one last time to buy that stupid rack.
/8ball Did the rack show up in stellar condition?
My reply is no
And 8ball does it again! The latest rack is just as beat down as the others.
What’s that definition of insanity that says something like “repeating the same actions, expecting a different result”?
@ruouttaurmind We already know you’re insane, 'cause you hang out here.
@ruouttaurmind You think they’d ever run out of replacement orders to send?
@Barney
https://shirt.woot.com/offers/were-all-mad-here?ref=meh_com
@narfcake Yep, I’ve got the T-shirt, too.
@Barney Yay!
@narfcake I would think the manufacturer would recognize the problem and take a couple small, inexpensive steps to resolve. OR I would expect UPS to stop accepting them for shipping since the manufacturer has been making claims against UPS for “damage in transit”.
I have four of them now… maybe I should try to corner the market?
@ruouttaurmind cornering the market in damaged baskets? Here’s some eye candy for you.
@jbartus Not sure which is more sexy… the car or that lush, green lawn!
@ruouttaurmind It’s not as lush and green as the camera makes it look.
@jbartus I live in the desert. Anything more than cactus and gravel looks lush to me.
Legally? Afaik nothing, you can keep it. Otherwise companies could just ship you extra products by “accident” and demand you pay for it.
Ethically? I’m probably one of they few people that actually gave Meh money when they sent me an IP cam. $20 iirc.
I didn’t have to, but hell, I like meh.
I’d contact the company and let them know. Most companies don’t care and let you keep it, although if they want it back they better be willing to pay the postage imo.
Tangentially, I did send them a birthday card (the one included with an older Fuku) somewhat recently. They never replied
meh why do you hurt me so.
@Nexar I also paid for the camera. I also sent in the birthday card. I, on the other hand, was not hurt when they didn’t call or write back. Mostly because I’m an emotional void.
/giphy emotional void
@Nexar It’s not so cut and dried. The federal non-solicit law only applies to the Post Office. Other shippers are regulated by state law, which may (and often do) make exceptions for clerical errors.
[If this wasn’t the case, I might still have the second Little Giant ladder that I was sent in error.]
I normally will contact them. But just recently I ordered a dog bed from Amazon (after having it in my “later” cart for too long and the price going up way too high) and when it arrived there were two packages on the front stoop. I figured maybe it was like foam in one and the outside covering in the other, so I open the “foam” one up first and inside that there’s two more individually wrapped packages, both with my name on them. They turned out to be giant furniture protectors. I have no need for them, but I’m not going to run around trying to find a box to ship them back in. If they were in a box instead of that stupid plastic shipping bag I would have done something about it. Instead I’ve got two free furniture protectors just sitting here not being used (along with a “cave-style” dog bed that my dog refuses to go inside, so she just sleeps on top of it, lol)