I should be strict about Payment Rules
12th June 2005
Last weekend, I went to Tokyo Disneyland and stayed there with my family from Thursday to Saturday. My internet connection then was very slow and affected my replying to customer emails.
We had a nice view from the Hotel in Tokyo Disney Sea buy we experienced a typhoon on that day. We were lucky in that way, as there were few customers. In popular holiday seasons in Japan, such as the Golden week, we have to wait for 2 hours just to buy a popcorn !! Can you believe it? That’s why I tried to go there in rainy season but I had not expected the typhoon.
Now we are having two problems about payment.
First incidence goes like this. We received an order from a Caribbean country for 9 cars from one of our customners. But we just received the payment for 4 of these cars (90%). These cars have already been shipped to his country. We have a B/L for him, but we won’t send it unless we receive 100% of the payment for these cars. Now we have a big problem. The customer says that he will pay the money, but we can not trust him because he should have made the payment to us 2 months ago. We have already waited it for a long time.
Now I will be forced to sell these cars in Japan. If we don’t return the deposit, the customer will lose a lot of money, and we don’t want to do this. We think it is our fault,too, because we should have been strict about the payment. We thought he bought many cars, so we relaxed the rules, but it was not a right judgment. Of course, we won’t send him the Bill of Loading unless we receive 100 % money. From now on, I have learned a lesson. We will not ship the cars, if the customer wouldn’t pay 100% amount within 4 days. We will be firm with this rule.
One more similar incidence occurred. We sold a car from USS auction to a Canadian buyer, but he wanted to cancel the order after he bought the car - because he doesn’t like the interior condition of the car. Some parts of interior are not in good condition. He also said to he was not aware of this condition because we had not sent him the auction sheet. My reply to him was that we can not cancel the order. If he really wanted to see the auction sheet before buying the car, he should have mentioned to us before buying the car and we could have sent it to him. But he did not insist on it and we did not find it necessary to send him the auction sheet.
Of course we would buy a car with beautiful interior if the customer insists on it, but we can not read what is in the customers’ mind unless they tell us. Canadians can import only cars which are 15 year old. The car we selected for him had a grade “4″, so we had mentioned to him that the car was in a very good condition. It is very unrealistic to find a 15 year old car with perfect conditon and the customer has to understand it. Now I have no choice but to take his deposit as I’d be forced to re-sell the car at USS auction again. I can not cancel the order after buying the car - that is the auction rule and I have to abide by it. I really don’t want to cause trouble to customers, but if few cases like these occur, we may go bankrupt.
Technorati Tags: Tokyo Disneyland, USS auction, car
