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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2Kv1gHc
current ongoing saga in my online retail hell life:
one of the services i sell a lot of online– hundreds of customers– is that we develop film.
there are a small handful of people who bought the service and then never sent us their film. i figure life gets busy, and left them in the queue, and forgot about it– one is 500 days old now, another 400some, one 150 days but emailed me like 2 months ago saying “i didn’t forget! i will soon!” and i replied with the instructions again, and then there’s this one who’s like. 115 days ago. (And like… I just dunno what to say to these people so I’ve just let them sit. Seriously though.)
She sent a convo and was like “i never got instructions?”
I’m like. The listing begins with READ THIS LISTING, and then the instructions immediately follow. The photo accompanying the listing has the instructions written on it. When you make any purchase from my shop, the email you get says “Thanks! If you ordered film processing, here’s the address to send it to!”
So I wrote back. “Mail me your film at the following address.” (The specific phrasing is important; by coincidence, I wrote “mail” instead of “send”, because I had just explained to another customer that generally the US Mail works fine for this, and it was on my mind. I was worried it came across as too harsh, but. Come on.)
An hour later she wrote, “Do I mail it to you?”
…
What the fuck. What the fuck.
She has to be able to read and write because she is communicating with me by writing. And I get it, the listing itself says “send”, and that could be ambiguous; do I mean FedEx, or somehow email, or what? but I had just written her a convo that verbatim mentioned the US Mail, so. She’s in California, and my store is clearly marked as being in New York, so it’s not like she’s going to be able to drop it off, or get me to pick it up. You don’t need specialized understanding of the world to realize that, I hadn’t thought. And honestly you could use FedEx or DHL or UPS, that would be fine, or like, private courier I suppose if you really wanted! But yes, you can mail it, I just told you to mail it.
What else can I say? What more can I tell this person???
So I just… copy-pasted the text from the message I’d just sent her.
“Mail me your film at the following address.” I couldn’t resist adding, “are you getting these messages?” at the end.
I just hit refresh on the convo page and it doesn’t look like she’s written back.
Really, though, what else can I do?
I very recently had a customer write to me and ask me if developing film resulted in digital images. And I was like, duh no? but I collected myself and wrote back kindly and sincerely, explaining that it’s an analog process and if you want it to be made digital, that’s why one of the options is to digitize the image. I get it; some people don’t remember film, don’t remember a time before all images were digital. It’s a recent development but not that recent; there are adults who would’ve been too young to be aware of much as it was changing.
And that worked out fine, the customer wrote back “Oh I get it now! Thanks so much!” and bought the correct service and mailed me her film, and it’s at the lab now getting worked on. Great! Perfect.
But I don’t know what to do about this current customer.
(Your picture was not posted)
current ongoing saga in my online retail hell life:
one of the services i sell a lot of online– hundreds of customers– is that we develop film.
there are a small handful of people who bought the service and then never sent us their film. i figure life gets busy, and left them in the queue, and forgot about it– one is 500 days old now, another 400some, one 150 days but emailed me like 2 months ago saying “i didn’t forget! i will soon!” and i replied with the instructions again, and then there’s this one who’s like. 115 days ago. (And like… I just dunno what to say to these people so I’ve just let them sit. Seriously though.)
She sent a convo and was like “i never got instructions?”
I’m like. The listing begins with READ THIS LISTING, and then the instructions immediately follow. The photo accompanying the listing has the instructions written on it. When you make any purchase from my shop, the email you get says “Thanks! If you ordered film processing, here’s the address to send it to!”
So I wrote back. “Mail me your film at the following address.” (The specific phrasing is important; by coincidence, I wrote “mail” instead of “send”, because I had just explained to another customer that generally the US Mail works fine for this, and it was on my mind. I was worried it came across as too harsh, but. Come on.)
An hour later she wrote, “Do I mail it to you?”
…
What the fuck. What the fuck.
She has to be able to read and write because she is communicating with me by writing. And I get it, the listing itself says “send”, and that could be ambiguous; do I mean FedEx, or somehow email, or what? but I had just written her a convo that verbatim mentioned the US Mail, so. She’s in California, and my store is clearly marked as being in New York, so it’s not like she’s going to be able to drop it off, or get me to pick it up. You don’t need specialized understanding of the world to realize that, I hadn’t thought. And honestly you could use FedEx or DHL or UPS, that would be fine, or like, private courier I suppose if you really wanted! But yes, you can mail it, I just told you to mail it.
What else can I say? What more can I tell this person???
So I just… copy-pasted the text from the message I’d just sent her.
“Mail me your film at the following address.” I couldn’t resist adding, “are you getting these messages?” at the end.
I just hit refresh on the convo page and it doesn’t look like she’s written back.
Really, though, what else can I do?
I very recently had a customer write to me and ask me if developing film resulted in digital images. And I was like, duh no? but I collected myself and wrote back kindly and sincerely, explaining that it’s an analog process and if you want it to be made digital, that’s why one of the options is to digitize the image. I get it; some people don’t remember film, don’t remember a time before all images were digital. It’s a recent development but not that recent; there are adults who would’ve been too young to be aware of much as it was changing.
And that worked out fine, the customer wrote back “Oh I get it now! Thanks so much!” and bought the correct service and mailed me her film, and it’s at the lab now getting worked on. Great! Perfect.
But I don’t know what to do about this current customer.
(Your picture was not posted)
