I'll try to keep this vague, I made a product for a new customer. They are located several states over, so it had to ship, and it was a decent sized order so had to ship freight. They made it clear that they were pretty rushed for this order, and my experience with freight is they're always a couple days late. The estimated delivery date was the day before they needed this by, I still cautioned the customer that they can be a couple days late and if it was crucial the shipment arrived on time, to upgrade the shipping to a Guaranteed Delivery, they took their chances and didn't. Well the shipment for some reason was transported by rail, not truck, and was not only a couple days late, it would have been 10 days late if the customer had not intervened and sent a "rescue" truck in to intercept the package and drive straight there ($$$). They requested a refund on the shipping expenses since it was so delayed. Now the value of the shipment was not that much, it was just large, and refunding the shipping charges would put this order at a loss. I politely tried to reason with the customer saying granted the shipment was more delayed than I anticipated, I personally still shipped the product out when I specified I would, you did not want to pay for guaranteed delivery date, and I am not to blame for the trucking company being so delayed. The freight company makes no guarantees at all on their delivery dates, so they are not willing to do anything about this (not even a partial refund since the shipment didn't go the whole way!). Well now the customer is saying they will "take legal action" to get the shipping charges back if I do not willingly give them a refund. Now the worst part about all this is the customer is a law firm.
It seems ridiculous they would actually proceed with legal action over a few hundred in shipping charges, that's small claims court worthy, but I don't' think you can do small claims over different states? Which I feel like makes this even more complicated for them. Is this one of those things where I should just give them what they want to avoid the headache? At the same time I'm a little stubborn, and I feel like I held up to my end of the bargain so why would I refund them? Or am I looking at this from the wrong perspective, and I am in the wrong and I should refund them?
It seems ridiculous they would actually proceed with legal action over a few hundred in shipping charges, that's small claims court worthy, but I don't' think you can do small claims over different states? Which I feel like makes this even more complicated for them. Is this one of those things where I should just give them what they want to avoid the headache? At the same time I'm a little stubborn, and I feel like I held up to my end of the bargain so why would I refund them? Or am I looking at this from the wrong perspective, and I am in the wrong and I should refund them?