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What to do with silent buyers.
We had a large order placed with us about a week ago or so. We put the order together but we were short one slope. I contacted the buyer right away. It's been four days and I've heard nothing back (I sent a second message yesterday). I don't want to keep the order out much longer. I'm wondering how long I should wait and what I should do if I never hear a response. Give a refund? Store credit? What?
Thanks!
Thanks!
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https://www.bricklink.com/messageThread.asp?ID=254559&nID=1148316
and know that the post there sent your very reasonable question into a hornet's nest.
We buy from multiple family locations and look at outstanding orders and any messaging literally all the time. This must be so frustrating for you to do due diligence and get crickets chirping!
You have, no doubt, sent an email to the one on the order for this buyer. For the sellers receiving orders from me here they also have my phone number. We realize that BL decided to suspend that information...but some of our newer buyers go off of text messages only on their day to day dealings- might try that- I don't know, but might be the only attention-getting alert they see.
From experience and other forum postings, it is inadvisable to ship and just add a message with a coupon for their next purchase, as it is also inadvisable to just add coins to make up the difference in the part- never had this happen to us but time will tell.
If this is a fairly common part, and the order is sizable enough (?) best to "Job Out" the extra part by doing a drop ship from someone else and give all the details of that additional shipment.
In the past I have been shorted a common part and did not bat an eyelash, but, have had sellers advertise a quantity of a lesser available piece, only to short me. In the former, I give good feedback for the overall great order...in the latter, I make a note to not shop there again- You are not one of those "latter" sellers so our hope is that this buyer will soon make their wishes known and you can proceed in the excellent way you have always handled your customers.
Best, Best Wishes!
Since this situation is always a DB or binning error on my part, I typically refund the buyer for the missing item AND all or a fair portion of their shipping costs (as @Hoddie noted) so they can procure it from another vendor without losing any money. We all know having to buy it somewhere else costs the buyer more than planned since they have to pay TWO of us shipping then. I do the same if something snuck through our early quality checks and I see a problem with the item when pulling it to ship. To me that's the cost of doing business and motivation to keep our DB and bins as accurate as possible. ;-)
If at all possible (i.e., a very common item), I also include a placeholder part in a different color so I don't hold up someone's build too much because of this.
I then usually email the buyer to let them know what I did (with sincere apologies) and asking them to let me know if the approach did not work for them and how I could make it right. I found people to be extremely understanding and fair-minded so long as you're up-front and proactive! :-)
We're all human, buyers get that. :-)
I felt really bad for a recent buyer - I had TWO missing items when pulling their 90-lot order (though the 2/ea 200-lot orders before theirs had zero probs), which deeply bummed me out - we've worked so hard the last year to get our DB as close to perfect as possible, sigh), but they were just **awesome** about it. In fact, I think they were cooler about it then I was, lol (we are quite critical of ourselves <s>).
I have had vendors "drop ship" to me via a different vendor, which as a customer is also an approach I appreciate.
Bottom line, I think any time one looks at this from the customer POV (with the result getting them their item OR ensuring they don't lose $$ yet can still obtain their part), you can't really go wrong. Treat them how you'd want to be treated. :-)
You are 100% correct on all of the above!
Love how you lay this out on additional cost just the way Hoddie did so well! ...and because a buyer has chosen the update option to want lists - Having to go about revising your Want List, which was culled from your previous "buy", to include items you thought you already ordered and paid for...but now are searching through the list to find a second seller, and buy...
The added bonus of being on BrickOwl is that you have access to phone numbers, which usually are cell phones, to be able to add text to the methods for contacting buyers.
This is kinda a "hear me now and know it later" that a lot of people, new buyers, older buyers, are becoming accustomed to this method to know what is going on in their lives including online buying orders- SO very happy that BrickOwl has the phone number on our orders- Keep on keeping on!
@One_Click_Off - you are very, very sweet, thank you! You are super-appreciated (and I do remember you buying from me, thank you!). We are just hyper-critical of ourselves - nothing wrong with striving for perfection (though we could probably beat ourselves up just a BIT less when we don't make it - kind of how our parents raised both of us, even through from other ends of the US and talk about TOTALLY different worlds Joe and Sandy (who is typing this) were raised in, lol).
It does shock me that there are sellers out there that feel no responsibility whatsoever for any inventory errors listed - unless there was a crazy database dump, the problem in that scenario always lies with the seller.
We either made a typo when listing in quantity or location, forgot how to count that day (been there!), or (this happens to me the most if something is missing) it gradually made it's way out of its marked bin to fall below to another one and I can't find it. Sometimes digging around in a small bin to fill orders some at the top eek their way to freedom over time and fall into other bins while you're blissfully unaware, sigh. I will say this issue has improved a lot (I've learned a lot since opening 17 months ago) once we started reinventoring our stock last year. It's slow (we're not even done yet, lol, but I would say now up to 7/8 done) but has been VERY worth the time. Our initial data entry was over a space of three years before opening, and I was actually ill for a lot of that so my inputs were not optimal. We've also taken advantage of reinventory to improve our comments on parts that don't meet our standard of "good" listed as acceptable.
Ok, I'll stop babbling. Everyone reading this have an AWESOME rest of the day!!! :-)
"Sometimes digging around in a small bin to fill orders some at the top eek their way to freedom over time and fall into other bins while you're blissfully unaware, sigh."
Yes, that is super annoying. Our cardboard boxes don't have covers (currently slowly changing over to covered plastic containers) and some of them are stuffed full. I have to be careful when sticking those boxes on our highest shelves that I don't do it with so much force that the bags on the top slip over and fall . I've had that happen before. Not fun when I tell a customer I don't have a piece, then a day after I ship the order I find it on the floor...
Or when I take two boxes at once to my table and then accidentally put the bag of pieces in the wrong box. I've spent excruciating minutes looking on the bricklink/brickowl store trying to find out when I last sold a missing piece to figure out what box I may have accidentally stuck it in.
"we started reinventoring our stock last year. It's slow (we're not even done yet, lol, but I would say now up to 7/8 done) "
I don't know how you do it. But when we list pieces we take the entire box and check the inventory as we go through. For example, we have a box with just 1x1 bricks, so when it's time for us to list them we'll take the box and make sure that the inventories are all correct before listing the new ones. It makes reinventoring a lot easier. Not sure if that'll work for you depending on your system, but it works great for us!
Yes, that is exactly how we are doing it! It's slow, but totally agree, it's easier to do it while relisting added items then to just go through it all in one swoop. :-)
Can I be Ted? ;-)