Customer wants old order shipped

What would you do?

[Tonearm]

The business I'm running used to be run by someone else and changed payment processors a long time ago.

A customer wants an order that is over a year old to be shipped. He claims he was charged for the order but it was never shipped to him. We do not have an internal record of his payment but he has sent me his bank statement via email which apparently includes a charge from my company.

I thought the logical thing to do would be to have him have the charge reversed via his bank and I told him that. He says his bank refuses to reverse the charge since the transaction is over a year old. I have a suspicion that if he really was charged by my company, he reversed the charges long ago and now wants the order shipped as he sees the company is back in business.

Can a bank refuse to reverse charges because they are over a year old?

[LifeinAsia]

Customers can dispute/reverse a charge up to 3 months after the time it appears on their statement. One year is long past the deadline.

I'd talk to the previous owner to see if he remembers anything about the issue. He should have the cc processing statements you can look through to verify the original charge and see if it was ever reversed. (Or the order may have actually been shipped, but the guy is trying to trick you into sending another.)

[ispy]

The credit card companies state that you should not charge a card unless you are shipping within the next 24 hrs. Before this only an authorization should be done.

[wrkalot]

Is this a "completely" different company just with the same trade name? If so you are under no obligation what so ever and the customer has no recourse.

IF it's the same company (corporation, etc.) then you may want to dig a little deeper.

[smells so good]

My take would be that this customer is out of luck (he would be with me). A year is too long to make a claim. On the other hand there are a couple of things that you might want to consider.

The value of the original order. Will you take a bath issuing a refund or replacement? Or would a relatively small amount be worth the effort to maintain good customer relations?

The value of the customer. Is he a repeat customer with a good history? Again, if your loss is relatively small, it might be worth the investment to keep the customer satisfied. If we are talking about a significant amount of money, maybe you could offer a one-time discount on his next order.

[Daffy528]

good points.

its about the customer's worth and how much the product is worth.