I got talking with a new customer the other day about a purchase he said he recently made on eBay. He had been checking out pricing for some time on a fly fishing reel that we happen to carry and when he saw it available on-line for a price considerably less than what we sell it at he bought it. That’s where the fun started…
His ‘great’ price started to erode when he realized after the fact that he had to pay shipping. Then he got a call from the shipping company asking how he wanted to pay the duty. Wait, it gets better! When he got his reel he found a scratch on it but when he emailed the guy from whom he bought it he was told that age-old refrain: “all sales final”. To top it off he got his credit card statement and then had a final kick in the pants when he realized that the price quoted was of course in US dollars – and he had unknowingly paid the exchange rate.
I was interested as to why he was telling me this and the reason he said was simple: he wanted us to know that in hindsight he would have paid less in our store for the same reel and knows that the problem with the scratch would have been corrected. He went on to say we had finally earned the right to be his fly shop of choice (I think mostly because we didn’t tease the bejesus out of him when he told us the whole story)
We stand behind the products we sell and our customers know that if they have a problem with anything they purchase at WILSON’S it will be dealt with to their satisfaction. To that end, last week we had an older gentleman come in with a pair of SIMMS waders he had purchased from us 2 weeks before. Turns out the first time he used them his crotch got soaked from a hole in the seam. That doesn’t happen very often anymore – especially with SIMMS waders. Like any customer might, he gathered up the waders with his receipt and marched down to our store to give us ‘what for’. By the time he got to the store he was ready for a fight but after he explained the situation and before he could say another word we gave him another pair out of our inventory, apologized for the inconvenience and gave him a WILSON’S hat for his troubles. I have to admit we love taking the wind out of the odd sail… And we’re pretty sure we got him as a regular customer too !
First, we need precipitation to get the river levels up so the steelhead will start coming in from the Great Lakes. That’s the fly fisher talkin’. Secondly, the retailer in me knows that people do not start their Christmas shopping in earnest until we get our first snowfall. 
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