First, let me say, that I really don’t like working in retail. I’m not a people person, and spending a year working at a big box retail store years ago confirmed that, lol. However, I’ve worked for the past 4 years in the e-commerce side of a wholesale business, and I’ve discovered that I do enjoy that. Probably because I don’t have to SEE people, lol. I’ve also discovered that there’s just as much strangeness involved in online sales as there is in brick and mortar stores. No names, in order to protect the not-so-innocent.

About 90% of customer questions could be answered themselves if they would only READ.

“What’s the measurement of the curtain panel?” The title and Description clearly stated the measurements.

We’ve gotten complaints from customers upon receiving a single curtain panel, even though the title and description clearly stated that it was a single curtain panel. “But the picture shows two curtains!” Well, yeah, because it’s weird to see a window with only one curtain panel.

Nearly all of our products are offered with free economy shipping, with expedited shipping available for a fee (usually about $3). At least once a week, I receive an email asking if we can promise they’ll receive an item by such-and-such date, but they didn’t pay for expedited shipping.

It’s not unusual to receive multiple emails from a person, with the same question, over and over. Within hours. Apparently, we’re not expected to step away from the computer.

When we have clothes for sale, we try to include a size chart. That didn’t stop one person from asking, “I wear a European Size 36. What US size is that?” It also didn’t stop the same person, after no one responded immediately, from sending a second email. “I see you’re going to be a little bitch and not answer.” BTW, we can and do block people from making purchases through our eBay store for such harassment.

“My 5 year old is big for her age. What size should I buy?” No idea, ma’am.

We had a customer complain that her purchased product was shipped via UPS instead of USPS. This was during a hurricane, and the post office shut down completely for several days. However, UPS was open. You know they would have complained if we had just waited to ship it.

This one happens frequently. If we’re out of stock in a particular size, someone will deliberately purchase a different size, then contact us to request the correct size.  Look, if we’re out of stock, we’re out of stock. We’re not just hoarding the other sizes, lol.

Returns with customers open up an entirely different can of worms. “This color isn’t exactly the same as the other curtains I purchased somewhere else,” so the customer starts a return for “Item not as described.” We’re just going off of the manufacturer’s description. It’s not our fault if the curtains labeled “Dusty Rose” that you bought from us don’t match the Dusty Rose curtains you bought elsewhere. We research items to make sure they do match the manufacturer’s description.

Sometimes, we sell items with damaged packaging. It’s a way for customers to buy something at an extremely discounted price. When we do this, we clearly state that the package has been damaged. But there’s always a person who complains after receiving it, which goes back to my earlier statement that so many of these issues could be alleviated if they just READ the description.

Last week, a customer contacted us, a full week after the order was shipped, to request it be sent to a different address. And then opened up a return for “Item not received.” Yes, your item wasn’t received because you gave us the wrong address!

I think my favorite one, though, may be the customer who returned fake garland. “It looked too fake.”