Yeah I hadn't heard of that deal until that link was posted. WOW! Everybody here on BF should read that link.
Ya know the wife and I started talking about that. She handles most of the business side of things. We were guessing she had maybe 2-3 hours into it. The only call I made was to the PD and I took the return call from the PD and the mom. So my total time out of the shop 30 minutes maybe. Consumables (belts, steel, handle materials, leather) are the cost of doing business. Fraud, not so much I think. Another way of looking at it. You go to work for a company, you do your job, you get a paycheck. Three months later you get an email that says accounting decided we shouldn't have given you that paycheck so we just took that money out of your account. Now you're pissed cause you know what you worked there you had that paycheck coming. You make a couple calls and give them proof that you worked there and they say Ah we'll put the money back in your account. So all is rosy. Another month later bam another email. Hey we are going to take that money back out of your account even though we know you did do your work and we're going to charge you more money for our time taking the money back out of your account. Remember that knife is our paycheck. If we'd allowed it to just slide it wouldn't have cost us just that one knife it would cost us two. Because I would have had to make and sell another knife to replace the money we'd already spent obviously four months later after receiving it. Your labor and materials on the second knife net you zero cause now you are just breaking even. So was it worth it? Yeah it was because that second knife I will get paid for and I got my money back on the first. I certainly understand your point of diminishing returns and you are right. We were almost there. Outside of the call to the PD what else was there to do? Lessons learned:
Twenty twenty hindsight and all to do over again, I think I would of just called the guy. Probably could of got it all sorted out over the phone. That was our original thought when we received the first email from Paypal. We cussed and discussed it some and decided just to fill out the rebuttal that PP had in their email. I was a little concern about muddying the waters and I didn't want to give the customer any further ammo that he could say now the merchant is harassing me or anything of that nature. So we decided with the rebuttal not the phone call. But as it turned out it probably would of been ok. If it indeed had been a fraud, knowing what I know now about how these things are not really investigated what would of it hurt?
