posted on January 3, 2001 01:47:45 PM
I noticed that bottles of a particular perfume were going quite high on eBay. I happen to have a partly-used bottle of the stuff, so I listed it. It did OK - since I mostly sell trinkets, it was one of my bigger sales to date. The bidder paid right away by Paypal, and I boxed it up and shipped it out.
A few days after Christmas, I checked my PO box and found one of those ominous postal-service baggies....with a torn corner of a priority box that had enough of my return sticker to show my box. It was pretty clear, from the size of the corner, which box it had come from.
The next day I talked to a supervisor (well, talked at a supervisor, very fast) yelping that he MUST find this! It was not insured. Dumb me.
The next day I gulped hard, emailed the bidder and told her what happened. Offered an immediate refund. Much to my surprise, her response was "Let's hang tight and see if it turns up."
Lo and behold, it did. I had wrapped the bottle with a copy of our correspondence inside, and they used that address to get it back into my box. It went out again today (insured, you bet!) When I emailed the bidder offering free shipping or SOMETHING, her response was to thank me (!!) and to say "I am in no hurry at all!"
eBay is down right now, so I can't leave her feedback....but I can come here and blather about how cool she was! (and while I wish the PO hadn't mutilated the box in the first place, I have to admit I'm pretty impressed I got the contents back.)
posted on January 3, 2001 02:44:56 PM
"I had wrapped the bottle with a copy of our correspondence inside"
ALWAYS use an inside label! It will save your tuchus when this happens. One magazine I mailed was somehow filleted out of its outer packaging, but the inside label taped to the protective plastic baggie was enough for the USPS. It arrived a bit late, but it arrived.
posted on January 4, 2001 06:17:49 AM
My best story on an incident like this was when my SO's mother died and the cremated remains were shipped to us in the urn. It was a bronze urn which apparently fell right through the bottom of the box in one of the postal centers. What was delivered to us was a carefully resealed empty box. The scene I made in the Post Office was one for the ages.
Several hours later, a postal worker made a special delivery trip to our house with the urn. Apparently, when it fell out of the box it became separated from it. But a sharp postal worker half way across the state found the tag attached to the urn with the name of the crematorium and an invoice number. They called the crematorium, got the delivery address, and repackaged and readdressed the urn. Our local post office spotted this box, labeled "repackaged", and realized what it was. I have been a USPS fan ever since (but I still gave the crematorium hell for inadequate packaging).
