Let me state for the record that I appreciate all of my international customers and their business. They tend to buy the most obscure items and help clear out my unmovable inventory. Now let me state that I find it extremely inconvenient that they live outside of America. Shipping to other countries, from the extra cost to the customs forms that make you feel like you’re shipping heroin inside of dead kittens, is bad enough, but the real fun is the gamble of the actual delivery process will actually accomplish its function and deliver the package. By my count, I believe the Post Office has roughly a fifty-percent success rate with my international packages. Of course, if I tried to insure it, I might as well make things easier and set fire to a pile of money right there.

It’s the Post Office’s ineptitude that this issue sprung out of. I had to send some vocabulary tapes to this buyer to Japan. A couple of months pass, and he e-mails me saying he didn’t receive the tapes. Big surprise. I reminded him that I can’t refund for Post Office mistakes and told him to wait. He insisted I was wrong and bothered me until I made it clear I couldn’t refund him anything. He then left me negative feedback, the entire comment being, I’m serious, “n.” Ouch.