It's over, 19 years of bogus orders

[k1xv]

Yes instantly.
I'm thinking he may be cheap and always trying to hustle the exchange rate but never pulls the trigger.
Most of my customers are wannabe engineers.

You may be on to something- he could be a repairman saying he bought these parts trying to fleece
his customers- we call that grease and release- you get nothing but a grease pack..

He gets the receipts for his tax records, and declares cost of merchandise as an expense that he never actually pays for.

 

[Zee09]

I had a friend who used to buy something at a brick and mortar store (this was before on line shopping), take it home, keep it for a week using it once or twice, then deciding to bring it back and exchange it for a similar item. He would take that home, use it once or twice, then bring that back for a refund.

A "customer" like that is less than worthless. He takes fresh merchandise and turns it into open box items.

When I sold the guns I would get many orders a week before a match.
Same deal...and repeat.
I guess that's when the restocking fee started.

I had a well known celebrity do that and word got around quick and everyone cut him off.

 

[BornSlippy]

I had a friend who used to buy something at a brick and mortar store (this was before on line shopping), take it home, keep it for a week using it once or twice, then deciding to bring it back and exchange it for a similar item. He would take that home, use it once or twice, then bring that back for a refund.

A "customer" like that is less than worthless. He takes fresh merchandise and turns it into open box items.

Even Costco with their liberal return policy will cut people off for too many returns. They refund your item, refund your membership fee, keep your membership card and explain that since you return so many of the products they sell, you are clearly not happy with Costco and they want all their members to be happy.

 

[dbias]

I would have cut him off on the third cancellation.

 

[Pablo]

I had one guy for like three years just gripe like a maniac. Ask him for his order number? Silence.

Look up his order by name? Never a customer, no orders with even a close name. BUT people use fake names and such.

Then time would pass and he would start the whole griping process again. And so on.

Finally he listed the parts he didn't get.

"Well sorry sir, we don't sell those parts, never have. " Silence.

Starts at it again - finally he said "sorry, I got you confused with someone else..............."

6 months pass, he starts at it again. I stopped responding. Never heard from him again.

I think some people do this as a hobby or to get FS

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Business closed 2 years ago. I am down to 28 part types on eBay. Still gives me milk money and no gripers, stellar rating. Easy really. But some day it will be pointless.

 

[SC Maintenance]

He is definitely running some scam.

In the industrial world customers get fired all the time, although its often the requests are simply not replied to. The market learns who they are. We have only outright "fired" a customer once that I am aware - someone of import called and politely asked the customer to quit calling and harassing customer support and we would be happy to buy back any material of ours he had.

 

[Kantaro]

He gets the receipts for his tax records, and declares cost of merchandise as an expense that he never actually pays for.

Knowing that he gets emailed an invoice immediately, 100% this.

I assume the IRS review would just look at the purchase invoices to validate the expense claim. It would be difficult for them to verify if it was refunded without going through bank accounts/credit card statements or third party checks with vendors.

 

[97prizm]

Yesterday a gent from France came in and placed the same order he has placed exactly 6 times a year for 19 years.
Without fail he comes in a few hours later and asks me to cancel the order and I politely respond that I will do so and I do.

Yesterday I became proactive and immediately refunded his order before he could notify me.

A few hours later he emails me all upset that I did so. I told him after 19 years I decided to refund him immediately as I'm busy with non fantasy orders.

He got upset and asked me what I was talking about. I copied and pasted all those orders to email and sent him the bomb.

He came back and said he had no idea he was doing that and had absolutely no recollection he did so.

My customers pull typical nonsense stunts and they assume you deal with millions of people a year and forget I am a one man shop.

I get a bad rap as tough to deal with but I endure this crap on a daily basis from obsessed hobbyist.

Never once did I get mad but I don't believe his story. Trust me in two months he will be back. I can block him but why bother.

Another loser is waiting to take his place anyway.

A friend of mines neighbor owned a local pizza restaurant in town. It was really good. They had a guy who ordered frequently but "Always " found an issue with his order. The last straw was when he said their deep dish pizza was "too square ". They told him to start eating at Domino's

 

[Pew]

This always amazes me. When someone doesn't show to their appointment I think they think we're so busy that we won't notice. The reality is I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs staring at their name for the 30 or 60 mins I was supposed to be working. Then we make internal notes that document the fact that they couldn't bother to show up. If that happens enough we give them the boot. It's always the same, they deny missing anything, as my FD is looking at their very accurately documented history with us.

The lady worked for dental offices her whole life; the amount of patients late to appointments or surprised that they get charged for missed appointments is astounding. I don't understand how adults get mad when they get charged for missed appointments or that the doctor won't see them because they were "only 5 minutes away", 30 minutes ago.

 

[Zee09]

A friend of mines neighbor owned a local pizza restaurant in town. It was really good. They had a guy who ordered frequently but "Always " found an issue with his order. The last straw was when he said their deep dish pizza was "too square ". They told him to start eating at Domino's

Oh yeah that kinda guy

 

[PWMDMD]

The lady worked for dental offices her whole life; the amount of patients late to appointments or surprised that they get charged for missed appointments is astounding. I don't understand how adults get mad when they get charged for missed appointments or that the doctor won't see them because they were "only 5 minutes away", 30 minutes ago.

Yup..I tend to be pragmatic about it. If they don't have a history of being late and I can get what was planned done or if there's more than one appointment scheduled and one was shorter, I will try and get that appt done, but I absolutely refuse to run late for the next appt. I'm on time 99% of the time and when I'm not it's not by more than 5-10 mins. I have had people complain several times over the years that I run on time...sometimes you can't win. In the end, I fall back on the fact that I have never missed or been late to an appt in my adult life. Not once! So I know it can be done.

 

[AZjeff]

I build custom tuning parts and hardware etc for precision European airguns and in this case it was custom replacement parts for an obsolete recoiless Olympic grade rifle.

See that wasn't so hard was it? Very cool. My son was into competitive shooting 25 years ago and got to use a Feinwerkbau PCP rifle we called the robogun.

It looked like this

 

[4WD]

I had a friend who used to buy something at a brick and mortar store (this was before on line shopping), take it home, keep it for a week using it once or twice, then deciding to bring it back and exchange it for a similar item. He would take that home, use it once or twice, then bring that back for a refund.

A "customer" like that is less than worthless. He takes fresh merchandise and turns it into open box items.

Right there with “champions” hitting pawn shops looking for beat up Craftsman tools only to burn Sears …

 

[ATex7239]

It is ok to fire customers.

 

[Hall]

I assume the IRS review would just look at the purchase invoices to validate the expense claim. It would be difficult for them to verify if it was refunded without going through bank accounts/credit card statements or third party checks with vendors.

That's what I was thinking too. Someone (the IRS) will certainly cross-check bank records or credit card records to validate the purchases.

But, why would he care that Zee09 cancelled the order on his own ? That shouldn't make a difference to him.

 

[Zee09]

That's what I was thinking too. Someone (the IRS) will certainly cross-check bank records or credit card records to validate the purchases.

But, why would he care that Zee09 cancelled the order on his own ? That shouldn't make a difference to him.

He may think I'm aware of his scam and cut him loose... or possibly mentally ill...or????

 

[dlundblad]

So in 19 years, he’s never one had a completed order with you?

 

[walterjay]

I have had to fire a few customers over the years. The last one really hurt. We typically did 80K a year with him. He started losing it and getting irrational. Sad to see and lose him.

 

[Zee09]

So in 19 years, he’s never one had a completed order with you?

Yes, never....
I'd see his orders come in and I make most stuff instantly but I learned early on he was playing games. I got burned a few times making his stuff but he canceled before I'd get it shipped out.

 

[bunnspecial]

Yup..I tend to be pragmatic about it. If they don't have a history of being late and I can get what was planned done or if there's more than one appointment scheduled and one was shorter, I will try and get that appt done, but I absolutely refuse to run late for the next appt. I'm on time 99% of the time and when I'm not it's not by more than 5-10 mins. I have had people complain several times over the years that I run on time...sometimes you can't win. In the end, I fall back on the fact that I have never missed or been late to an appt in my adult life. Not once! So I know it can be done.

You're reminding me of a missed dental appointment a few years ago where the office both wanted to charge me and make me reschedule.

The issue was-and I'm sort of making up times but this is the gist of it-the appointment was on my reminder card as 9:30. They sent me a text the week before and the day before that it was 9:30. There was a phone call saying 9:30 somewhere or another in there too. Day of the appointment rolls around, and they're calling me at 9:10 telling me I missed my 9:00 appointment.

I was...quite unhappy...especially as I've never missed an appointment with a doctor/dentist/etc and on the very rare occasion I've run late(i.e. traffic I couldn't have possibly predicted) I call ahead to let the office know. I argued with the office quite a bit over this one, especially as I'd taken off work and in fact arrived at the office about 15 minutes before the 9:30 time they had confirmed the day before. They finally relented and worked me in after they conceded both the reminder card and the multiple texts said 9:30, although somewhere or another in there was an implied accusation that I'd fabricated all of that.

I'd been unhappy with that office for a few small reasons(not the least of which that I've faithfully had my teeth cleaned twice a year my entire life, but had gone a little over a year from 2020-2021 as I'd relocated during the summer of 2020, my previous dentist had cancelled my scheduled cleaning due to COVID shut-downs, and finding a new dentist had been low on my list of priorities but they spent a lot of time shaming me for the ~15 months since my last cleaning), but that whole incident made me look for another dentist that I've been very happy with. They seemed rather taken aback when at check-out that day, they wanted to schedule my next appointment and I said that given their seeming inability to keep track of schedules and instead blame me their mistake, I thought it best that I look for another office...