If you sell books online then you know that back to school season is a great time for us.  Students are always looking for a bargain.  I have hundreds of academic books and a decent amount of current textbooks so I sell my fair share this time of year.  Now that we are at mid-September the textbook season is winding down and textbook return season is starting up.  This is the time of year when I have the most returns. 

 Students drop classes or buy the wrong edition or no longer want their books for any number of reasons.  So this time of year is is important for us to cintinue to implement excellent customer service when handling returns.  If somebody buys a book and there is something “wrong” with it and they want to return it I accept it and provide a full refund (including shipping).  If a person decides they no longer need the book I accept a return and refund the purchase price but not the shipping.  This is my simple policy and I have never had an issue with a buyer. 

There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns – most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon’s A-Z policy).  I keep my return policy simple.  The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting).  Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers.

I recently had a buyer go bonkers on me in an email.  They were irate that the book they bought had a tear on the dustcover.  They buyer of the book threatened to report me to Amazon for fraud basically start some sort of boycott against me because I was lying scum and a sleazy seller.  The only problem was that the buyer did not read the item description and even glance at what condition the book was listed under.  They saw the price of the book and click on the buy button.  The book was listed in “Good” Condition with an item description that said “clean text & tight binding.  Dustjacket has tear at top of spine.

Ah yes – the pleasures of customer service.  My initial reaction to receiving this rant brings me to my rule #1 when dealing with customers which is:

1. Pause when agitated – I really wanted to lay into the guy for all his accusations but I didn’t.  I walked away from the computer for a few minutes instead and took a few deep breaths and then responded to the email.

Here is what I wanted to write back to the buyer upon reading their email to me:

Dear jackass,

I assume your are literate given that you purchased a book from me and were able to write such an informed email to me.  Your email gives me pause though  – I thought this person can read and write yet they cannot comprehend what was written in the description of the book - is there something wrong with them? is their email to me a cry for help?  If not then maybe you are just a moron who is too lazy to read a book description that clearly states that the book had a torn dustjacket.  Of course why would you bother to read it – just make accusations that I have committed some great fraud against you (yes – the $5 profit i got from selling you this book has put me over the top to buy a Senate seat).  Anyway – among other thing you can do to yourself I hope one will be to seek the help you need.

Regards

Well-  I simply wrote there must be a mistake and gave them the item description and the link to it on Amazon.  I also sympathized with them that sometimes the item descriptions were not clear enough and if that was the case with mine please let me know.  I then said if they wanted to return the book for a full refund to please do so. 

Writing a professional (or even semi-professional) response can be hard when someone is so obnoxious but do NOT respond in kind.  Just go about your business calmly and pause when agitated.