Don't know what to do.

[bladespark]

About two months ago I sold a fursuit commission on furbid. The terms were that it would be finished by Anthrocon. I knew that would be cutting it close, but I work fine under pressure, really, so I wasn't worried. I ordered fabric for the suit at the beginning of this month, as that would give me three weeks working time, that should be plenty, and I made the head frame while waiting for my fabric delivery.

Unfortunately for me, the fabric never came. I went to find out what had happened, it was out of stock! Hadn't been shipped, and heaven knows when it would be shipped!

Well... that's just screwed me over. I've got enough on hand to finish the head, hands, tail and feet, so I wrote to the customer, let him know what had happened, apologized profusely for my screwup, and told him that I still was certain that the partial suit would be done in time, but unfortunately the full suit was impossible, a new fur order from somewhere else would still take too long to arrive.

It took two days for him to reply, which kind of stressed me in and of itself, as I'm hanging out in limbo not knowing whether I should be working on this suit or not.

I got his reply today. The entire body of the message was "..."

That's it! What am I supposed to do with that?! I know I screwed up. I apologized! I promised the very best I could do under the circumstances, and I'm stressed to death now. I cannot give a full refund. I've spent money, I've done work. And I don't have the money just lying around. I don't even know if he wants a refund, because he hasn't freaking told me! I really don't know what to do here. I mailed him back asking what he wants, but I'm really stressed. I've been late with things before, but I've always been able to work it out with the customer so that he's at least mostly satisfied. I am not happy at all about this. I should have double checked the fabric order, but I've never had that happen before! I don't want to have an unhappy customer, and I don't want to screw him over, but I have no option here. I can't conjure fabric out of thin air. I thought a partial would be acceptable.

Augh.

Edit: WTF?!!!! He replied telling me that he doesn't know what he wants me to do, he doesn't want a refund, and he's cancelling his reservations for the convention. WHY? WHAT? I said he'd have a partial suit by then! And even if he didn't, 90% of furries at a con don't have fursuits anyhow! What?

Edit again: apparently he's just not very articulate. Anyhow, solution has been agreed on, refunds are not needed, and I'm a little less stressed about this. Though it's still horribly annoying.

Comments

[silveradept]

That's really weird. And there's nowhere else this fabric can be conjured, I assume, because you have already looked for it. For your fabric company to not tell you that it was out of stock the moment they found out isn't good, either. (At least, it sounds like there wasn't immediate notification.)

You've given your customer the options, now they have to give you direction. The cancellation behavior is a little odd - unless he was only going for things that all require full suits (I have no idea if such a track even exists there), there should be plenty to do in a partial.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

There's nothing that requires a full suit, and precious little that requires a suit at all! Just the fursuit masquerade contest, is the only thing I can think of.

And they didn't notifiy me AT ALL, let alone immediately. It was me going "this should have been delivered by now" and going to check that let me know it was out of stock.

[silveradept]

Okay, so there's no particularly sane reason to cancel on this setback.

That there was no notification at all on this makes me think this is pretty bad practice - I hope that they're focused on good service to the point where they ship your fabric when it arrives and offer you the equivalent value in other fabrics as well. With what you use it for, any delay or lack of notification for fabrics not being in stock is a potential disaster.

[daughterofhavok.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like he's trying to play the guilt card. You know, you start feeling so badly about it that you just have to find the fur, or give him a refund anyway, that sort of thing.

Or he just over-reacts all of the time.

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

I agree. Stuff happens and life doesn't always give us what we expect.

It's unfair that the customer isn't going to get their suit sure, but it's also unfair for them to hold it above your head like that.

[harliquinnraver.livejournal.com]

maybe he canceled his plans to go because he couldnt find a roommate anyway? maybe it wasnt about the suit.

[endymion-v1.livejournal.com]

He could have been undecided the whole time, too. I know I've been known to go back and forth about whether I'm going or not until the very last minute... (though, I live in PA, so I can tend to stretch it out like that and not piss a bunch of people off...)

If he had a lot of outside stress rapidly building up, I could see why he might not want to drag his bad attitude to the convention....

Though, that's probably not it.

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

I felt stressed on your behalf just reading about this! Don't you just hate the silence thing when you have to break bad news or discuss issues of extra costs, payment, etc? Glad it sounds to be working out for you though.

Heh. I'm in my own business dilemma at the moment with a client who has a website with PHP/MySQL needs (only just informed yesterday; NOT my area of expertise) and I haven't a damned clue what to do about it since I insisted I could get the job done under the details given originally. It's gone from one website design to two totally different projects now. Blah. Oh well. We always manage to work something out with clients, eh?