Okay, I don’t know what to do.

The very beginning of ths month, a candle order came through for seven candles. Four of my best-internet-selling scent. I had to ship this in two boxes: the four in one priority box, and then the remaining three in a flat-rate priority. The first went out September 5th and the second went out on the 6th. Right away, I lost money on this deal because I had neglected to fix my shipping methods when I upgraded my shopping cart. So I was paid only $9 for shipping and it cost me $12.60 on the first box and $8.10 on the second.

Because of a recent shipment to Bes, where one candle broke (someone HAD to have hit it with something or dropped the box, you can see the point of impact *), I got insurance on the first box, that’s $1.35 of the $12.60 where contents are insured at $28 (4 x $7). I failed to insure the second box.

Well, yesterday, the 19th rolls by and said customer emails me and asks when I think he’ll receive the candles. I’m flabbergasted, of course, and I get my delivery confirmation numbers. It shows that one box was received on September 7th and the other on the 8th. However, he says that he did not get either box and that he has checked with both the local post office and his apartment complex. He acknowledges the say they have been delivered, but says he didn’t get them.

So, I figure, I’ll make the insurance claim and send him some more. I apologize.

But then I get to looking on the USPS website and I don’t know that it will be so easy. I may not be able to file a claim for various reasons. One of them, of course, would be that the USPS is showing that the packages were delivered. And even if I do, I guess I’ll only get $28 whereas my total losses after sending out more candles will come to $88.05 ($76.35 for new candles and actual shipping plus the $11.70 I lost the first time on shipping), more if I get insurance on these new packages. Of course, if insurance isn’t going to get me anywhere, why buy it?

Well, either way, someone, somewhere has these seven candles, and I want to know who, but I don’t guess I will be able to find that out. My guess is that they went to the wrong apartment and someone stole them. And here it occurrs to me that when I shipped those candles, I was never given an apartment number or anything like that, just a regular address (in other words, I wonder if this made a difference).

And in that case, is it really my responsibility? This is what I’m getting at, I guess. I mean, I don’t want to lose a customer, of course, who knows which ones may become repeat customers? But I did my part, I mailed it out, the delivery confirmation says they were received, is it really my responsibility if someone stole them? Of course, my sense of ethics will not allow me just to tell this guy, “sorry, sucks to be you.” I have to make good, it’s in my genes. But it ticks me off to think that someone could have stolen these. Especially since these were four of my very best sellers and then two of my good sellers. That really upsets me, that I have lost those six candles as it sends me closer to having no stock… with no reward. And at this time of year, too, as I’m already scrambling to get Christmas stock made up and am having to buy lots of supplies I cannot afford. I mean, I’m not amazon.com – this is a big amount to me, I can’t just turn around and offer refunds everywhere (they offered to refund my camera, over $300, they thought it was lost though it was just late).

And now I don’t know where to go from here. I guess I can ship him more and then try to recover my losses, but I doubt I’ll ever see a penny. When I calm down here, I will be sending my dad a message, maybe he can throw some weight around for me. But I wonder, too, if it would be any good to try and call out to this guy’s post office and/or apartment complex and yell at some people?

Oh, man, I’m gonna cry.

Ohhh, Steve just called in response to my text message to him about this. He says not to send any more candles, but to tell the guy he needs to file a police report for stolen mail. He says I’ve done my part that it’s not my problem. The problem with that is that I’ve already told the guy I’ll be sending more, so how to do this?

———-

I am getting tired of people screwing me over. It’s one thing if it’s actually my fault/issue, but let me tell you about two people from our fair on the 9th that I never did get around to posting about.

1. — At one point, I was at the booth with just Sarah while Steve was off with Elijah when this girl walked up. She wasn’t very old, nor was she very young – mid-to-late 20’s I would guess. As she smoked in my face, she informed me that they “didn’t know what happened, it just broke.” She had a Tahitian Orchid 1/2 pint in a bag (you’ll understand more about Tahitian Orchid with #2). She wanted another one. So I let her trade the broken one for a non-broken one. Of course, she did end up buying another, a 1/4 pint, but still, I lost on that 1/2 pint. When I looked after she left, it didn’t “just break.” It had a clear point of impact like Bes’s candle. We do wrap the candles a bit before bagging them, but – hello – it’s glass, you still have to be careful! She either dropped it or banged it on something, there’s no way around it. As for Bes’s candle – I still don’t get that – it was in bubble wrap and then surrounded by packing peanuts and the other two (one on each side) in the box were not broken, and the box itself was marked FRAGILE. Grrr.

2. — Before the girl with the broken candle, there was this guy and his wife. More accurately, the woman was shopping and her husband was standing around impatiently. I had a “special” going where if they spent $15 they could get a free 4 oz. (1/4 pint) Tahitian Orchid, or something like $25 and get an 8 oz. (1/2 pint) one free. So the woman’s quite vocal that she plans to spend $15 and get “that free one.” She tells me this three times. Now, my candles are also currently one for $7 or two for $12 (at fairs only) for the 16 oz., $4.50 for the 8 oz., and $3 for the 4 oz. Well, she decided that she was going to buy 2 pints for $12 and then a 1/4 pint for $3 and get the Tahitian one free, blah, blah, blah. Great. So she’s looking around and she notices the Home Sweet Home scent. She likes it. But I’ve already sold all that I had of the pint size, she needs another pint size. We made a mistake of having out two 1/2 pints (normally it’s one of each size max until it sells, then get another, but because we had already sold the last pint-sized one, I let it slide) and she picked those up and asked me if she could just get those two for the cost of one pint. Now, it makes sense when you look at it that way, but look at it from my perspective. She wanted to get two $4.50 candles for $6. The half pints, though containing half the wax and scent of a full pint are more expensive than $3 for the simple reason that the jars are more expensive. And, you know, if you buy half a pound of sugar at the store, you’re getting less of a value than buying a full pound, right? It always works that way. Anyway, I was thinking about it and I was opening my mouth to give in when the husband butted in with a rude tone of voice, “well, what’s the difference? You want to sell them, right? You are here to sell them, right?” So I gave in. Later when Steve returned he said I should have stood my ground even if it meant losing the whole sale, he said, “you’re not here to sell them, necessarily, you’re here to make money and you can’t do it if you keep giving into jerks like that.”

*sigh*