Above and Beyond

Recently, I found a Lego that no one remembered ever owning.  Since some of it had already been built, Doug and I decided to finish it and put whatever money we made off of it toward shipping supplies.  Everyone agreed that it was a good idea and we started on it in June.  Once we got working on it, we realized several pieces were missing from the Star Wars Lego.  Since I had ordered from the Lego replacement store previously for other missing parts, I thought that it would still be worth finishing.  Once the missing pieces arrived, I put the Hoth Wampa Cave together and listed it on eBay.

The Lego was a huge hit on the selling site and soon I had $58 extra dollars to use toward bubble wrap, packing tape and more.  About two weeks after I shipped the Lego, I received a message from the buyer that there were seventy pieces on the set that were incorrect and several more that were not true Legos.  Since there weren't a lot of pieces in the set to begin with and everything we have or have bought are Lego, I questioned his message as nicely as I could.  He agreed that our listing had stated that we could not be 100% sure that all pieces were included or correct but still wanted some type of remedy to the problem that he addressed.  I didn't agree with him but since I didn't want negative feedback, I offered a refund if he returned the set.   He didn't want that and asked for a partial refund instead.  I decided to give him $15 back and thanked him for compromising.

About a week after he received the refund, the buyer messaged again asking me to look for six pieces with stickers on them that we didn't know were part of the set.  I wanted to say to him "six is a lot less than seventy, so what were you talking about in the first place" but instead I spent an afternoon looking through all of our tubs of Legos searching for the blocks with stickers on them.  I was extremely pleased to find four of them and sent them out the next morning.   

In the end the buyer never offered to pay for the shipping for those pieces, but at least I did receive positive feedback from him.  Doug asked me why I went above and beyond for such little return.  I didn't really know, but I think it was because I realized that if this was one of my own children, I would want someone to treat them the way I did even if they were being a little over the top.  I don't know if I would do it again, but I was glad to help out this time.