I shipped a $300 package last month to a customer via UPS.
Customer claims to not have received it.
UPS tracking says delivered on doorstep with a photo.
I’ve opened a claim with UPS and it says under investigation. Tracking now says “open investigation.”
Customer is saying she’s going to sue me and file a chargeback unless I refund her. I responded that I am waiting until UPS has completed their claim to get the insurance to refund her.
She says that she cannot wait and will just have to sue me since she thinks I’m negligent in this case.
I have copy of shipping label and screenshots of full tracking. I even take photos of the packages before I ship.
Can she actually sue me? Nothing online says she can but I’m a bit confused. What can I do in this situation to protect myself from this happening again aside from shipping insurance?
People can sue each other whenever they want for just about anything whether they will win or be laughed out of court is another matter.
It’s not going to be cost effective to sue you over $300. Most lawyers bill that for an hour so almost no chance they will actually sue you. It’s just a threat.
A chargeback on the other hand could happen, I haven’t been through the process yet fortunately, but I hear credit card companies generally side with the customers not merchants, given you have the delivery photo though and shipment photo you may actually win a chargeback but I’m not sure.
There’s a couple things that could be at play here.
I’d first try to rule out 1, did you send them the picture of it on the porch? Did they agree it’s on their porch?
If it was 2, it’s not really your problem. You could ask them to file a police report for theft(this helps filter items 2/3 in this list), and only reimburse once you have a copy the only reason to do this would be to keep the customer happy which may or may not be important to you, if it’s not just tell them you’re not responsible for theft after delivery.
If it’s 3, they may file a chargeback, but if they do this a lot, they might not as it will look suspicious to the credit card company, if they have an abnormal number of chargebacks. Of course if you think it’s 3 don’t reimburse them.
I don’t know how many transactions you do but if your early days with a low number of transactions, a chargeback could cause problems for you. If not it’ll probably be fine. It’s good to have a backup payment processor just in case.
For future high dollar orders you may want to require signature. I’ll say my experience with UPS and FedEx on requiring signatures of late is terrible for home deliveries. They won’t even attempt to deliver sometimes, or just don’t bother to get a signature. This is my experience with deliveries to my house not customers.