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Davey Winder's Blog

How to spend

By Davey Winder in Editorial

Posted in Blog, e-commerce on September 30, 2008 at 1:39 pm

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I have written before about the problems of why ecommerce fails and the undeniable truth of the matter is that it usually comes down to treating customers like crap.

So here is a cautionary tale of how to spend

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Comments

Comment by CAB - September 30, 2008 on 2:21 pm

Don’t put up with it! If they sold you a faulty item, they are responsible in law for ALL costs including delivery each way.

Claim your money from them, if they refuse then make use of the Small Claims service, and add a reasonable amount for your time.

Comment by XOC - October 1, 2008 on 10:07 am

While I understand your frustration, an analogy can be drawn to a bricks and mortar store. If in a similar situation you had to drive out to a store, bought a product, drove home, found it to be faulty then had to drive back to the store to return it, would you expect the store to reimburse you for the money you would have spent on petrol driving back and forth? I wouldn’t think so…

S#!t happens. Occasionally you get a dud. If you had requested a replacement, they would have probably sent you a working one. The fact that you no longer had a use for it is not their fault. I’m sure that they did not sell it to you on the condition that it would be useful to you on your holiday.

Many people seem to think that when they purchase a product online, that the delivery cost is in some way included as part of the cost of the product and if the product fails they should be refunded the whole lot, but this is not how it works. Delivery is a service and is not refunded to the sender if the receiver decides to return something. While the point could be made that online retailers should account for this by increasing the margins on their products, this would turn many customers off that retailer as they would turn to ‘the guy across the street’ who is selling it cheaper. Many of the big online retailers are where they are because of the low prices they offer (and subsequently low margins) in the hope of luring more customers.

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