Is There A Way To Contact Or Investigate A Customer Who Keeps Ordering & Returning?

It's customer service that deals with orders so maybe you need to contact them and see if it is the same buyer and tell them your concerns, I hope they are not ordering and scanning them with a view to making more prints.

Don't worry about it. FAA works to keep buyers anonymous from sellers. Since FAA handles all returns, it's pretty much out of your hands anyway, and I don't think trying to get involved in that process would benefit you, FAA or the buyer.

Hi Amy, the first thing that came to my mind is they're staging houses that are for sale and having open houses. And returning the art once the home sells. BUT, that is just my strange mind working. It could be for a variety of reasons....are they sold with framing? Or just the print? In any case, getting in touch with Customer Service is probably the best place to start. I think the whole situation is strange, and as you stated this is not the norm for your sales historically. I would want to get to the bottom of this if it were my artwork.

Your staging idea makes a lot of sense, Joy.

Well, Murray, maybe the way my mind works isn't so strange afterall :) If this is the case, it is really stretching it. Those people get paid very well for staging a home properly....many times it's the staging that sells a home. In any case, it doesn't sound right to me. It got my BS meter jacked up.

Gill, theft isn't a real concern because each time they order with frames in the smallest size and have ordered the same image 3 times, each with a different frame. I really think they just can't decide on a frame or image. But, Joy, you may be correct. It may very well be a staging for an open house. Don, thanks. I expect you are correct.

I will contact customer service to at least bring it to their attention. In the long run, it's FAA that suffers. Me, I just get annoyed every time I see an order from this particular town because I expect it's going to be returned. I usually do a "woo hoo!" dance when I make a sale, but when the order is from them, I find I'm saying bad words.

That must be upsetting to keep getting returns. If they are in the smallest size I wouldn't think they are home staging maybe they just can't decide.

Joy, in my business, I deal with staged homes all the time. The agents are always looking for deals when buying or selling staging items. If they could essentially 'rent' them for up to a month at no cost, why not?

Gill, staging dollhouses, maybe. ;-)

Amy, that behavior is a tad wacky though. You can readily see how the frame looks online. I can easily see how getting that email from FAA about a new sale...and seeing it's from them...makes you say bad words :/

Murray, I'm kind of addicted to those flip, fixer, love it or list it shows on HDTV. I've got staging on my brain. It is strange about the small size though.

i'm thinking the person is a realtor and is "renting" the image. it depends how fast the cancel is. but you'll have to contact customer service about that.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

without even reading the other responses, its the thing that came into my mind. unless they are testing stolen cards on you.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

It is wacky. Especially because I think they have to pay for return shipping. I went ahead and contacted customer service to at least bring it to their attention and they already wrote me back!! Awesome! Yay, customer support! Here's what they wrote:

"This buyer I have dealt with myself, there is nothing wrong with your images, she kept a couple.
My guess is that she is a designer of some sort and was looking for prints that matched EXACTLY..."

So, the good news is that FAA is on top of it and I can let it go. I may still have a few bad words in my future, but oh, well.

Thank you everyone!
Amy

The trouble with a money back guarantee for any reason is that every so often someone will actually take advantage of it. The premise of that guarantee as a business is that only a few will really get returned and overall will incur very little loss. Glad you go a good answer!

Amy, you outcome is better than our was a while back when a buyer contacted us once via FAA to ask for a discount on several canvas prints. She said she was flipping houses and needed art for decorating them. We gave her a discount, via limited time promotion feature. She purchased and then returned them. Then she contacted us again to apologize that she had ordered a wrong size and asked us for a discount again, on a set of several canvas prints. We did not suspect anything was wrong until she returned the second set, again, and apologized again saying that she had not measured the space properly.

We are now sure she took advantage of the FAA return policy and also wasted our time. She did apologize after second return and said she would contact us again to "purchase" art from us in the future. We first thought of reporting her but then decided she was not our client and FAA customer service could see clearly what she was doing. We do have her name, though, since she had contacted us directly to receive a discount. We have not heard back from her.

The bottom line is that staging and/or flipping homes is big business so there bound to be a few bad actors here and there.

Raisa

If you're staging or flipping houses, isn't the art on the wall the least expensive part of the process? So would they go into all that trouble to order art, then return it and pay for S&H? I don't know. Maybe, but it sounds wacky to me.

it would make more sense to flip a house by buying your own cheap art, and just taking it down as a prop. in the long run, the shipping both ways, probably paid for them all.

i suppose another theory is a person that is a spender are buying things on impulse and the other one is sending it back. i know someone that got so drunk she actually bought a mountain of clothes, which she found with the card on top of the pile - when she came too. and she had no idea at all of where it came from. so it could be one of those deals.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

People are strange indeed. I had someone order 8 large prints of my Color Fusion series...and a few days before the cut off...returned them all. Didn't keep a one. And these are images that sell all of the time in all sizes and never get returned.

I'm sure the real disheartening thing about this is that you had counted on the sale - and several times when you thought you'd have a good paycheck - it flopped. Not anything you can do - except moan - FAA will have to deal with all the returns.

Ben & Raisa, I have been contacted for discounts, but my answer is no. If I gave a discount on an item, the only part that's discounted is my commission, not the price of the item, so it makes no sense to discount on FAA. I figure, if someone wants my art, they'll buy it. Once someone figures out you will give a discount, they will always want a discount. This is how I make my living and I work too hard at it to discount or give it away.

I've had a couple sales that were cancelled before being shipped that I figured were either impulse buys or they found something else they preferred. This buy & return business is just annoying, but I'm glad to find out it has just been a single buyer as I suspected. And FAA is aware.