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Doing customers favors can backfire spectacularly.

One delivery driver crossed wet grass to unload several tons of materials out back.

The customer complained about the damage.

Next time, curbside meant curbside.

Let’s see how this one played out.

Don’t want us to drive over your grass? ok, then curbside delivery it is.

My father in law just retired trucking and is helping his sons that have a small local delivery company.

They mostly work with some hardware stores that offer free shipping that way they get more sales.

Then they call some delivery companies and use the cheapest one.

The terms for the free shipping is that it is curbside, if they want anything else they have to pay extra.

One customer had an unusual request.

So last week they had this customer that asked for a lot of construction material since they were remodeling their home.

My inlaw went to the place and the customer asked them to put the materials in the backyard.

He said that it was a curb delivery and that their truck wouldn’t be able to drive there easily.

Basically the customer a 60yo asked very politely to help them since they had no way to move the stuff and they couldn’t had it in the front porch for safety and HOA reasons.

The father-in-law tried to be helpful, but his kindness was not appreciated.

Well, my father in law (now FIL to make things easier) told him that he would need to backup and drive over the grass which was wet, this basically took 20-30 minutes just to be able to backup the truck to the back yard and obviously made a bit of a mess in the front garden, but easier to fix some grass than to move a few TONs of construction materials.

He basically did this for free and just to be a nice person.

Next day FIL gets a call from the hardware store that the customer was very upset, that they messed up their front garden and blah blah blah. That they ended up giving the customer some credit notes/gift cards.

FIL told them that they wouldn’t be charging for that delivery or would give them the next curbside delivery for free.

The FIL apologized.

Well guess what.

Yesterday they got a new delivery to the same address with the same person. This time a lot of sheetrock panels, 2×4, and I don’t remember what else, but well construction material.

The customer asked the same, curbside delivery.

FIL first of all apologised for driving over the grass and you know all the apologetic stuff you do to keep your client happy, but here is the malicious compliance.

The customer had to make a choice.

Right when the customer was like don’t worry is ok, you can drop in the backyard FIL was like nope can’t do. I’m dropping it here as stipulated in this invoice you signed.

According to FIL customer was fuming, called the store, the store really didn’t care much.

They spent the best part of an hour discussing and FIL wouldn’t bulge, finally he was like if you don’t want to receive it is ok, It is already paid I will just return it to the store, but I believe they will charge you a re stocking fee.

So he had to make a choice, receive the stuff and move it himself, or return it and have the contractors unable to do anything the next day. So he decided the first, FIL left everything nicely accommodated in the curbside and left.

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It’s unreasonable for the customer to complain about the delivery but still want the next delivery delivered in the exact same way. This person’s FIL handled the situation well.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

A former delivery driver shares their experience.

Here’s a good summary of what happened.

Some people are really overly concerned about grass.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who documented times of noise spikes and turned their neighbor into a model tenant.

This is a good question.

After being punished for helping once, this driver followed the second delivery order exactly as written.

The customer could accept everything curbside or pay to return it, so those heavy supplies stayed put.

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Author

Chris Allen