Return request - extra shipping cost

[honky_nutter]

I sold box 1 of a board game, and accidentally sent the person box 2, their original postage address was in Australia.

Now they want a refund (fair enough) but they have taken the box to Japan where they live so the shipping would cost more than the game. Am I just screwed because I'm out of pocket the cost of the item now? I don't know what to do.  I had someone else buy my listing for Box 2 so I'm going to have to refund that and eat the shipping label cost for that too, which again is fair enough cause its my own fault.

[countessalmirena]

@honky-nutter,

I'm assuming that these were the Carcassonne expansions.

Obivously the choice must be yours... but in your position I would issue a full refund to the customers who are now in Japan. Were they to return the item to you, with you refunding the international postage cost from Japan to Australia, it would be more than the selling price of the game (let alone your profit margin).

That would mean that you can't make right the situation for the second buyer who wanted Expansion 2, in terms of sending them the correct item. Receiving back Expansion 1 from that buyer would not be cost-effective, particularly since the return postage method must be trackable. At this point I think your focus should be on minimising your loss, which means I'd simply refund the second buyer as well and tell them to keep Expansion 1.

By quickly refunding with an explanatory apology (not too long, not too fulsome and limiting the number of times you apologise to 2) and an offer to keep the missent items, you should be able to assuage the buyers' disappointment and make them more likely to purchase from you again.

[davewil1964]

I hope you dont mean this definition - 2 : aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive (OED). Any would be too much.

Though it is nice to encounter somebody who knows what the word means.

[countessalmirena]

Def. 6 in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary is what I had in mind... (too) effusive.

Oh, davewil, how richly particular is your deep understanding of wordage and the emulsion of what is written to communicate what may be, nay, what must be, transported from the innate and flesh-bound citadel of the self along the vehicle of a finite set of symbols wrought together to bring by means of the most powerful chariot (defying even Apollo's) that is human language, blazing across the sky of all that is spoken, written, signed, pressed, marked, until it comes to rest - fleetingly - at the mouth of Ἑρμῆς himself, delivering knowledge to man (in its broader sense) and thus lighting the fire of wisdom and purpose! Of this splendour and of that much-travelled journey to outdo that of the King of Ithica, you, davewil, are a master and great charioteer!

That's my nice little piece of fulsomeness... when I should simply say, "davewil, I appreciate your knowledge of language." (It's a bit short, though, isn't it?)

[crikey*mate]

That all sounded really dirty...