A few months back a customer out in California purchased a
Natural Acaica engineered floor from us.
It was a 60 box order.

Over a month after buying the floor the customer writes us a
scathing email. He tells us how he feels
his Acacia floor is low quality because the manufacturer used some filler in
some of the pieces of flooring during the manufacturing process – again, over a
month after buying it. He had not
installed the flooring and he demanded his money back. One of my associates forwarded me this email
and I immediately gave the guy a call.

The customer repeated his complaint to me. I proceeded to explain to him the nature of
Acacia flooring and how it is a very porous wood with some open grain at
times. I told him how I have been
buying large quantities of Acacia ever since it was introduced and there are
two things that I have never seen:

1-
A piece of Acacia over 4 feet in length

2-
A batch of acacia flooring with no filler. It just never happens. There is always some – that’s Acacia

The guy continued to insist the flooring was low
quality. I told him how I had a broad
list of suppliers who could supply me with Acacia, but I use this mill because
theirs is the best. I only sell 1st
quality, running line goods and not low grade products. He insisted that he was not satisfied and
wanted to return the flooring. I told
him to let me call him back, I’m calling the manufacturer.

The manufacturer immediately pulls 10 boxes of the same lot
and send me photographs. There is
nothing wrong with the floor.

I am and not wanting anyone we sell to upset with me, so I
caved in and told him I would take back his flooring back entirely and I would
refund him 100%.

I speak with customers on the phone every day. I am a very hands-on owner. I have to be honest, I want all the online
business. The only way I know how to do
it is offer a better product and better service. I’d never had a customer on the phone like
this one, something was different.

This is where it gets interesting……

So I tell the guy I will take the floor back, no
problem. He just needs to get the
flooring back on the skid and I will have the freight company come by and pick
it up – no big deal. There was a long
pause and silence on the line…… He then proceeds to tell me what he really
would like for me to do is send him additional boxes so he can take the “bad”
product out and use only the “good” He
then tells me that he has cut open over 20 boxes and segregated out what he
feels like is “good” flooring and what he feels is “bad” flooring. I told him flat out – If you have opened the
boxes up we can’t take it back. It has
to be resalable boxes. When you slice
them open, they aren’t resalable.

We went round and round on this for 30 minutes…..it got
ugly. He insisted that he needed at
least 25 TWENTY FIVE boxes of additional flooring to cull out what he didn’t
deem perfect. Being the good guy that I
am and wanting all my customers happy I offered to send him 15 additional boxes
at no charge – but with one requirement.
He must box up all the flooring he thinks is not good and let me ship
that back to our TN facility so we can cut it up for samples. He agreed to the deal.

This was several weeks back. This weekend I received an email from him
stating that because of all the “waste” he was only going to be able to send me
back 3 boxes of “bad” flooring. I was
livid! So I guess 400 square feet for
flooring evaporated or something. Even
after I GAVE him $1500 worth of flooring he is still hammering me saying the
product is low quality – while not being able to produce the product he deemed “bad”. We've sold at least 20 more orders from this same lot number - no issues. I have a box of it in my office - perfect flooring I must have SUCKER stamped across my
forehead or something.

I started digging yesterday to find out who this guy is, something
about it all just didn’t seem right. We
rarely have complaints. Get this.....he turns out to
work as a Consumer Advocate Reporter for a California TV station.

So…..you other flooring Pro’s out there. How
would you proceed? I’m thinking I need to send in an independent
inspector to measure up his job.
Obviously the flooring was used if he can’t return it.

You folks want to know why returning flooring is difficult? It's because of people like this guy - obvious fraudsters taking advantage of people who are just trying to have happy customers.

Alan Ward - WeShipFloors.com