When an Order Arrives Damaged

An order arrives broken and the message lands before you have had your coffee. The first thing worth knowing is that the speed of your reply matters more than the question of fault. A buyer answered within the hour tells a different story about you afterwards than one answered on Thursday, even when the outcome is identical.

Ask for a photograph before you say anything about blame. Not because you doubt them, but because you will need it for the courier and because it settles what actually happened. Ask for the outer packaging as well as the item. Damage done in transit and damage done in the post bag look different, and the box is the evidence.

Then decide the outcome and say it plainly. Replace or refund, and give a date. Do not put a customer through a claims process that is yours to run. The courier claim is between you and the courier, it can take three weeks, and it has nothing to do with whether your buyer is left holding a broken thing in the meantime.

If the item was made to order and cannot be remade quickly, say so, with the real timescale rather than the hopeful one. People accept a delay they were told about. They do not accept one they discover.

Where this goes wrong is the middle position: sympathetic messages, no decision, and a slow drift while each of you waits for the other to propose something. That is how a repairable order becomes a review.

Keep a short record. Order number, date, what broke, what you did, what it cost you. Five lines is enough. After a few months that file tells you whether you have a packaging problem, a courier problem, or simply an unlucky fortnight, and those three need completely different fixes.

One more thing worth saying out loud. A damaged order is not evidence that you are bad at this. Things break in transit. What a buyer remembers is not that it arrived broken, it is what happened next.