Back when I joined Water Value Company, they were a local dealership that wanted to get on the World Wide Web and I had some experience with that. After investigating the competition out there at that time (6 years ago) I found that an Internet presence for the company would be a great idea. Upon launching the web site in 2002, sales started coming in right away although slowly. While these orders were slow to begin with, they eventually started picking up to the point where the local dealership was no longer needed and we switched to 100% online marketing in late 2004. But before all of that, we invested a great deal of time closely examining the nature of web based water treatment equipment supply. It was discovered that there are a great number of people interested in repairing their water treatment equipment as opposed to hiring someone to do it or buying a whole new appliance. So we dedicated our efforts to providing components and parts for the Fleck and Autotrol brands of softeners/filters that we carry. After all, this equipment is designed to last for decades and if one o-ring should start to leak or an electric motor die, why replace the whole system?

So we began compiling an online database of inexpensive and easy to replace parts such as o-rings, drive motors, pistons, etc. Some of these parts were not normally stocked by the manufacturer and had to be specially ordered. This could cause a delay of up to two weeks before shipment, but it was better than the alternative which was either replacing a controller valve or even an entire system. For years Water Value was successful in providing these hard to find parts to our loyal customers; that is until recently.

On January 12th, a customer placed an order for some Fleck 5600 timer gears and shaft that the manufacturer does not stock. We charged this customer a whole $13 for these hard to find parts, but he will save himself at least $100 in service call fees and more than that if he were to replace the entire controller. But he did not get his parts until February 1st, so he initiated a “charge-back” on his credit card purchase. Basically, a charge-back is performed by the credit card issuer who feels that their client’s needs were not met by a specific purchase for various reasons. In this case the client felt that two-and-a-half weeks was too long to wait for special order parts.

So the credit card issuer took our money and gave it back to their client. The client never did contact us to complain at all, he just took back his payment. And did I mention he still has the special order parts? Even though it clearly stated on the purchase page which the customer bought from that these parts would take up to two weeks to ship, he and his credit card company felt justified in taking the money we earned for those parts. I honestly do not understand how some people can sleep at night.

As a direct result of this customer’s actions, we are now in the process of removing all of these special order parts from our web site. It is unfortunate that one person out of countless thousands that have purchased from us, can ruin it for future parts seekers, but so long as some people will do nearly anything to save a buck and the credit card companies will gladly take from others to give back to them without proper justification, we have no other choice.