Customer service issue.
 

Okay: my wife has a store (wedding crap). A girl won a raffle and got a $50 gift certificate. She ordered an item from us and spent some other money as well. All good so far.

Our employee went back and forth with producers of item (there is a proofing process) but neglected to give final approve to produce item because she forgot prior to going on vacation and then forgot when she returned from vaction. Thus item was unmade for 2 weeks. We had told customer we would have item for her in two weeks. When we found out item was not approved by employee, we paid rush fee to have item made quickly. Sadly, this all happened around 4th of July and item was not made for 3 More weeks (5 week total). Customer also dropped invites off at store so we could apply item to them for her. We then paid $90 to have item overnighted (mind you the customer paid nothing for item because was won in drawing) when it was made. Unfortunately, item was still not made, and her deadline (and limits of her patience) for sending invites was reached, so she picked them back up and sent without item.

Item arrives next day and she picks it up. She has now bad mouthed our business on Facebook.

Now, initial problem was definitely our mistake. We then went above and beyond, IMO, to try to rectify issue, especially considering we were getting zero money on this transaction.

My question: just let it go? Or should we try to let the customer know the amount we spent trying to rectify situation? We've already apologized repeatedly and offered her husband some free shit when he came to pick up item, which he declined.

You should sell the customers credit card information to the highest bidder

teach them to bad mouth LMAO

really though you should try to make the customer happy. word of mouth can kill a small business

Let it go.

Let it go.

I totally agree, but I'm not sure what would make her happy at this point. I don't want to badger her with some long winded explanation (like I gave you all). We also don't really feel like extending some massive store credit or gift to her because she wasn't really a customer to begin with (she ordered her invites online instead of at our store and only came Into our store because she won the drawing).

going too far to defend our company can backfire on you. This is just one customer. How many happy customers do you have compared to that one bad apple.

Exactly. You know you did right.
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Exactly. You know you did right.
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I was going to say this too.
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I guess going the extra mile could backfire as suggested. Also letting it go would do the opposite of stoking the fire if you respond and call her a ****ing **tch

Okay. Thanks for the confirmation. We are in a small area and very active on social media, so it hurts to see the bad press there. Still, shit happens and we did our best. Our reputation is solid in the area with the people who count at this point. Still just sucks to get bad publicity.

You can't please everyone, and if it's a small area then people know who the bad customers are already.

And your employee just got put on watch. Really, that's the individual who truly screwed the pooch on this one.

From the customer's perspective, you can see how waiting for several additional weeks contributed to an already stressful situation, since some people go bat shit crazy over weddings when it's really just a ****ing party. But, whatever.

That's no shit. There is a notorious person in our town. We've had two incidents with her already, and now she's wanting us to do a major project for her. We are seriously debating turning her down. This person is so bad that we described the first incident to another store owner and the store owner immediately said "I bet that was Customer X."

People who win free shit or pay pennies on the dollar for something at a charity auction have zero concept or appreciation that the vendor did it at their own peril. Consumers suck in many cases. I would offer a very simple explanation to her bashing via social media explaining how you did your best but there were some unfortunate, isolated timing problems and then let it be. Then banish ingrates like her from your store.