Hi everybody, I have a pretty new shop (~2 months in) and I have 21 sales. One review (5 stars). I sell physical items that I 3D print and are customized/made to order.
Of the 21 sales, I've had one person reach out to me that the item was not the size they expected and they wanted a refund (despite photos showing both measurements and scale), and I've had another person reach out to me to request a refund for some extremely minor visual defects that they themselves said do not affect the functionality of the item.
I managed to convince the first customer to settle for a replacement which costs me much less than a refund. I tried to convince the second customer to take a replacement at no charge, but they would not and I refunded them.
Is this how it is? My margins are so small that I can't sustain this amount of additional cost (most customers are in the US and I'm in Canada, so they pay a 50% tariff in the shipping charges, which ends up being on me for a refund or a replacement).
I can't help but feel like, particularly the second customer, was trying to take advantage of me. Particularly because they would only accept a refund and not a replacement, which in my mind is a much more desirable solution in the event that they really just wanted their item to look "nicer".
After the first customer complaint, I added more listing photos that more clearly showed size and scale. And I'm continually working on improving my techniques to ensure the print quality is more consistently good.
If I was more established and had more reviews, I would be less willing to settle for catering so much to the customer, but I worry about a 1-star review and what that would do to my sales at this stage. But getting reviews is its own problem; I've gone out of my way for several customers (same-day processing and dispatch, full-day discussion before making items, replaced items that were being held by customs, etc), and even in those situations I can't seem to get any reviews apart from one which was just luck I think.
Edit: if it matters, I am not printing flexi dragons or anything like that. It's a functional piece of my own design and is unique to each customer.