MarkOly - 5:07 pm on Feb 25, 2013 (gmt 0)

Or possibly people just think that big businesses should pay for their own mistakes. Within reason. If I ordered one x-ray diffractometer and received two, I expect I would do something about it.

Well I would never expect a customer to pay for my mistake. I was referring to situations like Ken's - USPS errors that get delivered eventually, before or after you've already shipped a replacement. My recovery rate on those is 0%.

I understand that most people aren't going to spend their own postage on returning an order. So I always mention that if they receive the original shipment, please write "Return to Sender" in big letters and drop in a mailbox.

I would guess that somewhere around half of these are true USPS misdeliveries. They're pretty rare now though - probably a combination of me developing an eye for potential problems - plus better tracking from the USPS. It used to be Delivery Confirmation only.