Hello! We don't have this problem too often but we think we handle it correctly, yet we had a customer get angry about this. A customer accidentally bought a skin product for dry skin, when she wanted a product for oily skin (the site clearly stated it was for dry skin). She emailed us that she bought the wrong item and wanted to exchange it for a different item. She sent it back at her cost, and then we sent her the correct item, and charged her for the shipping of the new item. She emailed us saying 'NO WEBSITES ever charge me again for shipping, I PAID to have it shipped back, i should not have to pay for the reshipment!" Our view is, if you order incorrectly, you pay to ship the new item (otherwise customers would continue to order items without reading the description and then keep sending things back counting on us to repay the shipping cost. What do you guys think? What do you do about customers who order the wrong item (their fault)? If it is our error, we always cover the shipping ...
Personally, I'd say it was her mistake, not yours, so she should pay for reshipping. On the other hand, you'd want to look at it as "how valuable is this customer to me?" AND "Will her negative experience likely affect me in the future with a negative review of your site?" If it is only a couple bucks to ship, I'd just write it off. I've bitten the bullet a number of times for the good karma. It has to be weighed carefully though.
If you think she's going to reorder AND you can cover the shipping with your profits, pay for the shipping taking a risk that she'd buy again. If you doubt it, ask her to cover the costs, as it was clearly her mistake.
I agree with usasportstraining. Yes, she screwed up, and you should not have to lose money, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of your response. I usually ask myself, "How can this help or hurt my business in the long run." Jim
Wow thanks so much for all of the replies! This board is great! She is a customer who orders maybe every 6 months. I think it just frustrated me because before she returned it, she said "If this doesn't work out for me I will try this next " so i got the feeling she was going to continue testing products and returning them.