You Can't Please Everyone, Wholesale Bingo Supplies' Customers Included.

Bingo supplies is like every other business in at least one way. You can't please every customer. This truism hit home again last week as our staff dealt with a customer who, to put it plainly, over-estimated her value.

I'll call this particular customer "Sue". Sue originally ordered from Wholesale Bingo Supplies approximately a month ago. It was a small order (which is fine, we love orders of all sizes) for some $9.95 bingo paper . I remembered this order because she asked to use her own FedEx shipping number after she had already been billed and charged for the order. Apparently, she could save herself $0.50, or so.

So, we said "no problem", cancelled her original order, notified our warehouse, refunded her order, charged her again without freight, and then requested that our warehouse supervisor arrange for a FedEx pickup of her shipment using her shipper ID. These are things we do in the normal course of business every day, but for an order this small, we lose money. The total time these steps take is probably around 15-30 minutes, and the profit we see on an order like this is probably $2.00. After the order was shipped, we decided to change our policy and only allow customers to use their own shipper on orders over $50.00. Which brings us to last week....

Sue calls Wholesale Bingo Supplies again and is upset. She received her order and (I'm paraphrasing) "it was the worst bingo game paper she had ever seen". She had "handed the paper out to her players and they had trouble playing on it because it would bend as they played". Now, let me pause this story here and explain to you a little bit about the bingo paper we carry.

There are 3 major manufacturers of bingo game paper in the US that sell to the commercial gaming industry (casinos, tribal casinos, commercial bingo halls, charity bingos, etc.). All 3 manufacture high quality, commercial grade bingo paper, and Wholesale Bingo Supplies carries all 3 brands. So, we carry the highest quality bingo paper on the market.

Could someone still get some bad bingo paper from us? Sure. Manufacturing errors occur, shipping damage happens, etc., but most of the time, our customers are going to receive the highest quality in the industry. However, if someone receives a bad product from us, send it back, and we'll refund your money. Now, back to Sue.....

So, Sue says the bingo paper we sent her was horrible. She wants a full refund, but she's willing to order more paper (a different style), only she wants us to ship this bingo paper to her without any shipping charges because, "our shipping charges are too high". Did I mention we're in Michigan and she's in California, and that paper is a heavy product and costs a lot to ship, and that we get our shipping charges directly from UPS? Did I mention that Sue is also being extremely rude to some of the nicest ladies you'll ever meet in our front office?

Now, normally we'd give Sue a full refund if she ships the product back to us, but she used up a lot of it and is unwilling to pay to have it shipped back. So, at this point, with the complaining, the unrealistic expectations, the unrealistic idea of costs involved and the importance of her order, we basically tell Sue that we're sorry, we can't help her. That's not good enough. Sue wants to speak to the owners.

Did I mention that Sue has been complaining for about 1/2 hour on the phone?

At this point, I tell our front office to let Sue know that there's nothing more we can do and talking to the owners isn't going to help. Our front office apologizes again and Sue hangs up , but not before telling us that she's going to spread the word about our bad service and that she knows a lot of people in the bingo industry.

Good grief. I wish you the best Sue.