In October, an online marketplace asked me to return a laptop I never received.
A day later, after looking into it, they agreed I had never received it. Then they asked me to go and fetch it, and send it back myself.
I said no.
This is a small story compared with the ones I usually write about. But it shows, step by step, how one wrong record can travel through a system until a customer who did nothing wrong is first treated as the problem, and then asked to be the fix.
I write about this kind of thing because it is my work. I review how software behaves when something goes wrong, and my standard is called No Silent Failure. In this story, every failure stayed silent until it reached me.
This article is also published on dev.to.
What happened
In August, I ordered a refurbished laptop from a marketplace that sells devices from independent sellers. The order was set for delivery to my home.
It never arrived. Later that month, the order was refunded. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.
Two months later, in mid-October, I got an email from the marketplace's customer care team. It said the courier and the seller had both confirmed that the parcel was "successfully collected" from a service point, and that I therefore had both the laptop and the refund. It asked me to send the laptop back, and offered a 10% discount code once the seller confirmed it had arrived.
The same conversation also held a prepaid return label and a checklist for shipping the laptop back, including photographing it from every angle.
I had never been to a service point for this order. I had never asked anyone to collect it for me. I had never seen the laptop.
I wrote back the same day. I explained that the parcel never reached me, that I hadn't collected it or authorized anyone else to, and that under UK consumer law, goods remain the seller's responsibility until they are in the buyer's hands. I asked them to get the courier's proof of collection: the date and time, the service point's address, and the name, signature or ID given at the counter.
Later that day, a second agent replied. They apologized, opened an investigation, and promised an update within one business day.
The next day, the update came. The parcel had never been collected. It was still sitting at the service point.
And then: since the order had already been refunded, would I please go and collect it, and send it back to the seller with the prepaid label? As a goodwill gesture, here was a 10% discount code.
Where it went wrong
I have no view inside any of these systems, so I can only describe what they did from the outside. From the outside, I count six points where a check, a link or a handoff was missing.
1. The refund closed the money, not the parcel
When the order was refunded in August, the money side of the order was finished. The parcel side was not. By the marketplace's own account, the laptop sat at a service point for about two months after the refund, and nothing in the process asked where it was or brought it back to the seller.
A refund on an undelivered order is a moment when two records should agree: the payment and the parcel's location. Here, one record said "done", and the other was never asked.
What would work: when an order is refunded before delivery, the same step tells the courier to return the parcel to the seller, and the case stays open until the seller confirms it has arrived.
2. A status became a statement about me
Somewhere, a record said the parcel had been collected. Both the courier and the seller passed that on. My guess is that both were reading the same tracking entry, which would make two confirmations really one source repeated twice. But that is only a guess.
What I do know is what happened next. "Collected" became "you have the device and the refund". A line in a tracking system turned into a statement about a person, and was sent to that person, without anyone asking where the proof was.
What would work: before telling a customer they have something, attach the evidence: when, where, and who signed. If that evidence can't be found, ask the customer a question instead of telling them a fact.
3. The return started before anyone checked
The message asking me to return the laptop came with everything needed to do it: a prepaid label, a link to the return instructions, and advice on photographing the device. The process had already moved on to the next step, built on a claim nobody had looked at.
Automation is good at taking the next step quickly. That is exactly why steps that assume something about a person need a check in front of them.
What would work: when a return comes from a courier's status rather than from the customer's own request, ask the customer first. Create the label after they confirm, not before.
4. The message lived somewhere I wasn't looking
The email didn't appear on the order in my account. My first job was working out whether it was even real, because an unexpected email saying you have something you shouldn't, with a link and an attachment, is exactly the shape of a scam. Only later did I find the conversation under a separate messages section.
When a company tells someone they are holding something that isn't theirs, that message should be easy to verify and easy to answer. If it is hard to find, the person spends their effort proving the message is genuine before they can even reply to it.
What would work: attach every conversation about an order to that order, so the customer sees it in context and knows it's real.
5. The burden of proof landed on me
I was asked, in effect, to account for something I had never had. That is asking someone to prove a negative, and it is very hard to do. I can't photograph a parcel I never saw.
So I did the one thing I could: I asked for the proof that should have been there from the start. As soon as someone looked for it, the story changed. The parcel had never left the service point.
That is the part I keep coming back to. The truth was available all along. It took a customer asking for evidence before anyone checked.
What would work: the side making the claim holds the evidence. If a system says a customer has something, the system's own records should show it before the customer is ever contacted.
6. The cleanup was handed back to me
Once it was clear I had never had the laptop, the request changed from "send it back" to "go and get it, then send it back". The parcel was with the courier. The laptop belonged to the seller. The one person in the chain who had no part in what went wrong was the person asked to put it right.
It would have meant two trips, carrying a heavy laptop between them, for a parcel I never wanted to see again. It would also have meant signing for it, and that signature would have created exactly the record that started all this: proof that the parcel had been in my hands.
The discount code was offered as goodwill. But a discount on a future purchase isn't payment for work, and this was work that was never mine to do.
What would work: send the physical fix to the parties who have custody. The seller and the courier can return an uncollected parcel between themselves, and the customer only needs to hear that it's done.
What worked
I want to be fair here, because one part of this worked well.
The second agent read what I wrote, apologized, and opened an investigation the same day. They gave me a time frame and kept to it. When the facts came back, they told me plainly that the parcel had never been collected.
That is what a good handoff looks like: a person takes the customer's account seriously, checks it, and reports back. The investigation did its job. What came after it is where the process went wrong, because the system's answer to "the customer was right" was still "so the customer should fix it".
What I said
I said no, politely and in writing. I explained that I wouldn't collect the parcel or sign for it, and that returning it was a matter for the seller and the courier. I asked for three things: for them to arrange the return directly with the seller and the courier, for written confirmation that nothing more is needed from me, and for the note on my account saying I had collected the parcel to be corrected.
The shape of it
Put the six points together, and a familiar shape appears:
- A record is wrong.
- The system treats it as true and acts on it.
- The person on the other end has to show that it's wrong.
- When they do, the cost of fixing it still lands on them.
None of this needed anyone to be careless or unkind. Everyone I dealt with was polite. The trouble lives in the joins: between the payment and the parcel, between tracking and customer care, and between "the customer was right" and "who fixes it". Each join is a place where a check could sit, and in this story none did.
That is what I mean by No Silent Failure. A parcel sitting at a service point for two months is a silent failure. A wrong status is a silent failure. Neither made a sound until it reached me, and by then it arrived as an accusation.
My recommendations for businesses
If you run a business that ships things, or any process where a record can be wrong, here is what I'd recommend. None of it is expensive. Most of it is about where you place a check, and who you ask first.
- Keep the evidence with the status. A status like "collected" or "delivered" should carry its proof: when, where, and who signed or showed ID. If the proof is missing, the status is a lead to look into, not a fact to act on.
- Ask before you tell. When your records and your customer's experience might disagree, start with a question: "Our records show this parcel was collected on this date. Does that match what you saw?" A question invites the truth. A statement makes the customer defend themselves before they can help you.
- Give every refund a matching return. When you refund an order that never arrived, the same step should bring the goods back to the seller, and someone should confirm that they arrived. Money and goods should close together.
- Pause automation before it points at a person. Automate the routine steps freely. But when a step tells a customer they owe something, have something, or must do something, let a person or a clear rule confirm the facts first.
- Watch for things that sit still. A parcel waiting at a service point for two months is a record that stopped moving. Set a normal time for each stage, and flag anything that stays longer, so you notice it before your customer does.
- Keep the conversation where the customer looks. Put every message about an order on that order, in the customer's account. Then they can see at a glance that it's genuine, and answer it without first wondering whether it's a scam.
- Send the fix to whoever holds the problem. If the goods are with your courier or your seller, the fix belongs to them. The customer's part is simply to be told when it's done.
- Make the apology match the mistake. If a customer was told they had something they didn't, say so plainly, correct the record, and confirm it in writing. If you offer a goodwill gesture, make it a thank you for their patience, never a payment for more of their time.
Happy customers don't need a business that never makes mistakes. They need a business that notices its own mistakes first, owns them, and puts them right without handing the work back.
Here is a simple test: count what the customer had to do to fix your error. Every message they wrote, every proof they had to find and every trip they were asked to make shows how much of your process still rests on them. The goal is zero.
A status is not proof. A refund is not a return. And the customer is not the courier.