On Doing Business

I suppose most of you know that I've recently created a "side site" to market my books, CD-Rs and e-books. I will admit that I much prefer writing to administration, and I've come up with a rather elegant system of distribution.

Now occasionally, things go off the rails. Once in a while, someone orders an e-book, and then realizes that an e-book is a download, not a real book - or, one woman used her office address for delivery of a book, and the system popped out her home address. I got the book back, contacted her, and re-mailed the book. I ate the cost of re-mailing the book, which meant I lost money on the sale.

You may be wondering why I'm mentioning this. Well, if you've looked at the "sales page" for my book, This Endless Moment you'll see a review of the book by Joe Vitale - a guy I respect. I subscribe to his blog feed, and today he was talking about good customer service. He'd sent for a product, gotten half of it, fired off an "irate" e-mail, and received a marvelous reply.

So, what am I on about? Yesterday, I bought a piece of software designed to make writing follow up e-mails easier. It came through what is called a "dime sale" - the price goes up (by a dime - get it?) every few minutes. The payment was processed through PayPal.

Then, nothing.

Nadda.

No link. No page forward. No e-mail confirming (other than from PayPal - who immediately sent my receipt.)

I waited 30 minutes, then fired off a slightly annoyed e-mail:

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So, I ordered ****************.
I received my receipt from paypal, and NOTHING from you! No link to a download, no explanations, no redirects, and NOTHING 30 minutes later by e-mail.
The system I use for my stuff deals with everything automatically, including the downloads.
This is kind of sloppy, don't you think?
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OK. So you know I teach communication, and that was kind of direct. Still, I recognize how much effort I put into working with my clients, providing value in my books, etc. And even though the whole thing was over 11 bucks, I was a bit cheesed off.

When I get "cheesed off" e-mails (only 1 or 2 a year, thankfully) I have a breath before I reply, and try to make the situation better.

Here's the reply I got from the obviously over-wrought marketer.

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Hi Wayne,

I'm pleased everything always goes perfect for you; that must be a pleasure indeed.
I would guess however, that your system does not do dime sales.
Obviously you were SUPPOSED to be redirected, and I have no way of knowing
that didn't work.
Here is the link you need to continue:

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Thank you so much for your generous patience and understanding.

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Needless to say, I'll not be buying from him again. He likely doesn't care.

Read the post above to see how this should really be done!