I have a few things up for sale on half.com, and I've sold things in the past. Over the weekend, I had a guy buy a book set of mine and send me this email:
I have just purchased a book/tape/card set from you on half.com to be shipped to [woman's name & address]. Can you do me a BIG favor. I am fixing a mistake I made with this customer. Will you please e-mail me immediately if you are missing the tapes or cards. Also, will you e-mail me when the book ships? I really appreciate your help here. Regards, [man's name & his bookstore's name]
Two minutes later I get this email from him:
One more thing i forgot to mention. Please do NOT include an invoice with this order.
After I got the second email, I realized that he wanted me to ship this book set and essentially pretend to be him. Excuse me? Am I your personal shipping service? What if the customer paid him $10 for the set and he's buying mine for $2? Not cool. I wrote to half.com and presented the issue. Here's what I got in response:
Thank you for writing in to Half.com customer service with your concerns about drop shipping for your buyer. I will do my best to address this.
Half.com does support drop shipping in every way, shape, and form. What I mean by this is buyers asking for the order to be shipped to another location. However, from what you've described it sounds like while this buyer isn't technically asking for you to lie, there is an element of withholding the truth. If you feel uncomfortable in doing that I'd recommend that you cancel this order and refund your buyer.
I was a bit surprised by their response. Not only is it unethical to withhold the truth, it's disrespectful to me and misleading to the customer. He should have offered a refund to her, not tried to use me. This guy's got a big bookstore on half.com - I'm a home seller.
I decided to give the guy a refund rather than sell my ethics for a mere $5. Give me a break. I'm removing all of my stuff from half.com and either putting it elsewhere or bringing it to the used bookstore. Too much of a headache!
What happened to ethics in business? It will be interesting to see if this guy leaves me negative feedback for not doing his bidding.
beware half.com
May 8th, 2006 at 05:48 pm
May 8th, 2006 at 06:13 pm 1147108419
May 8th, 2006 at 06:30 pm 1147109421
i do sell alot of books at garage sales...
May 8th, 2006 at 07:57 pm 1147114677
May 8th, 2006 at 09:20 pm 1147119622
May 8th, 2006 at 10:06 pm 1147122395
May 8th, 2006 at 11:53 pm 1147128831