American express stupidity.

[Jamesroe]

Backstory: I work in a call centre for a large home delivery wine company. We have our wine clubs, where we send out a case every quarter. To tempt people to take up the regular consignment, we have low priced offers for the first consignment.

As a result, many people look at it as a cheap crate of booze and then claim 'i never knew' when the second turns up.

I was dealing with a rather irrate man a few weeks ago who was mad that we sent the next consignment out and charged him for it (baring in mind that it would have been explained to him at least twice, probably three times BEFORE that second delivery arrived).

Half an hour later, he hangs up, despite the fact that I offered him a free collection and a full refund as soon as possible (I know, I'm a nice guy).

I heard from accounts that he called up amex and charged it back. Bad move. Since amex will literally charge back anything, we have started to refer all cases of non-payment straight to a debt collection agency unless they return our stuff at their own cost (we have a collection service, or they can pay to send 12 bottles of wine through the post). So this guy called them again yesterday shouting on and on about how this is wrong, how he will suffer...

It's only fair, we had to pay the chargeback fee, so he has to bay the bayliff fee. If every merchant did this, credit cards will soon have to stop charging back stuff for no reason, because pretty soon nobody would have a credit rating high enough to qualify for one. And now we only accept american express if the customer signs on delivery.

[Mystic]

Sounds fair. It seems a lot of companies are doing many things to look out for the consumer but not the businesses.

[it'srefurbished?]

Agreed Mystic. I find companies put too much stock in keeping people happy. Yes word of mouth is a very powerful tool and having a good reputation will net you lots of customers and I do think that you should do everything in you can to make a customer happy within reason. Too bad some companies take it too far and will bend over backwards for customers who don't deserve it/are being unreasonable. A lot of businesses like that can afford to do it, I suppose, so it's probably not a big deal for them. It's too bad stuff like this just re enforces (sp?) bad attitudes and behaviors from customers, I swear sometimes I get the feeling customers are just going through the motions when there's a blowup.