Christmas shopping online can be very convenient, but it’s not worth it when there are expensive shipping charges.

What would you do if you were charged more for shipping after you already completed the purchase?

In today’s story, a customer gets stuck paying for shipping charges that weren’t disclosed during the purchase. In his country, this is illegal, and he is determined to get his money back and get revenge on the company.

See how the story plays out…

Stick me with hidden charges? I’ll show you…

So this past Christmas, my missus and I purchased one of our 9yr old son’s Santa gifts from a certain UK sports retail company that also have many stores here in Ireland as well.

It was a football rebounder, kinda like a trampoline that you kick the ball at and it bounces back to you.

Anyway we purchased it from their Irish website and thought nothing more of it.

They did some investigating.

A few days go by and we get a notification from a certain brown uniformed courier company that there are customs charges due on something, and as you can imagine we’ve bought many things for the kids so we had to double check what we’ve ordered and we didn’t have anything left that was being imported so we naturally assumed it was a scam.

So I told the wife to call the company and find out who shipped it, and it was a different courier company based in the UK.

After a bit of digging and investigating it turns out that it’s our rebounder. They had shipped it from the UK, via a local carrier, to the brown uniformed guys to deliver to us.

OP tried to talk to a manager.

Now, my wife and I are both on disability, so an additional charge of almost €50 when you’re both already on a fixed income is harsh, especially at Christmas, so I told her to pay it and I’d deal with the retailer.

The first day I called I had to call 3 times being stuck on hold for at least 20 minutes each time, but I was patient and polite because I’ve worked in a call centre before so I knew those people are only doing their job.

I asked to speak to a manager and was promised a call back each time that never happened.

OP was persistent…

The 2nd day was quite similar.

The 3rd day I was starting to get annoyed so called back, waiting even longer on hold and finally wasn’t taking this garbage any longer.

I told the rep that all I wanted was the €50 back because our consumer rights in Ireland dictate that a person must be informed of any additional charges on a purchase, at the very latest, by the final checkout screen, and in this case there was nothing to show that, and I could easily replicate that issue by putting the same item in my basket and going all the way to the checkout screen again and there was nothing saying we’d have to pay import charges.

The customer service rep wasn’t very helpful.

The rep was indifferent to the situation but tried to “help” and what he said sent me over the edge.

He offered me a measley €20 gift voucher to use on their website, but more importantly he read a statement to me.

He said “we advise our customers that there may be DDU charges (Delivery Duty Unpaid, i.e. customs charges) on any item that gets shipped outside of the UK.”

Then I asked him where it states this information and he paused, then said he didn’t actually know.

He made a threat, but the rep didn’t care.

I said “Well I know 1 thing, it doesn’t say it anywhere on this transaction because I’ve checked and because this is a violation of my consumer rights i’m going to give your company 1 last chance to make this right. Have your manager call me within the next 60 minutes or I’m going to post this entire debacle on LinkedIn and link every senior officer in your company!”

Then I hung up the phone and waited……. Yet again, no call.

The next day I went on LinkedIn and followed through on my promise.

It was time for revenge…

I created a post detailing what they had done by sticking us with hidden charges and that they were ignoring our requests for a manager, and everything they said and did.

Then I tagged EVERY senior officer at that company from the regional managers, through the European directors, all the way to the CEO, and I shamed them for how they operate their company.

This, ladies and gentlemen, was now an act of war.

The revenge continued…

Shortly after I posted that I noticed that they took down the item from their website in an attempt to hide this but they must have thought in a simpleton that doesn’t understand how the internet works.

They didn’t realise that when you searched for “rebounder” on their site, that it shows the item in question, so I took a screenshot of that, then another of the item page that was now “missing”, but then I did a Google cached search for the same page and found a version from 2 days prior happily showing the item.

Then I added a comment to my original post highlighting how they were trying to hide it, with the evidence, and trolling them for their heinous behaviour ESPECIALLY at Christmas.

Then I tagged and shamed all the senior officers again, and at this point it was really starting to get some attention, not only publicly, but 3 people in “incognito mode” viewed my profile….I wonder who they could have been…….

So naturally I took a screenshot of the 3 mysterious visitors listed on my profile and did the same thing. Commented on my own post highlighting it and trolling them for their incompetence.

Finally, someone called to try to help.

The next morning I got a call from a senior exec at their head office in the UK practically licking my boots with apologies, asking what she can do to make this right.

I told her I originally only wanted my €50 back as it wasn’t fair, nor even legal, that I had to pay it, but since I had to go to such lengths to get their attention now I wanted my €50 back, a full refund on my entire purchase, AND I wanted to keep the product. That was the only thing that would make this go away.

She asked for a couple of hours to fix it and I said ok.

The exec called back and made it right.

About an hour later I got another call from her again apologising.

She asked for my PayPal address where she sent the €50, then she refunded the whole purchase, and she let us keep the product.

Obviously I thanked her for her help because at that stage I was just happy it was over, but I’ll be sure not to let anyone walk all over my family, even if they are a £58,000,000 annual company.

And the moral of the story…

The most of the story here is, don’t take garbage from anyone.

I may be just 1 man, but my sons view of Santa is FAR more valuable to me than the opinion of some retail chain that doesn’t care about it’s customers nor how it operates ethically.

That’s great that the company finally made it right, but it sounds like they also need to add a disclaimer prominently on their website about the possibility of extra charges.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

He really was a “nightmare customer.”

He helped other customers too.

This reader wants to know how to replicate the steps OP took.

Another person is inspired to try this idea.

This is all too often true…

This person sounds a lot like OP.

Don’t let big companies get away with breaking the law!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.