During the holiday rush I encountered one customer of a type that makes all artists cringe. She ordered a simple ear cuff which I happily sent on its way to the address provided. The address was a dorm on a college campus in upstate New York. Now from personal experience I have to say that dorm mail centers often are undermanned during the holidays and often chaotic as well, thus delaying mail delivery, and this was a small parcel.
A couple of days later she emailed asking when she could expect the package, I told her the day I had dropped it off at the post office and that due to season rush it could take twice as long as normal. A couple more days and I receive an email with a very negative tone stating she had not received the package yet wanting me to send another. I waited 24 hours before responding, I suggested that I would send another with tracking on it this time. A normal expected response would have been a thank you, instead I was being asked to ship to a different address 19 miles away because she had moved out of the dorms during that past week.

Breath! Just breath before responding. Well I guess I did not breath to relax quite a bit as I sent her a mildly snarky response that the tone of her communication had changed quite a bit. Perhaps she should check with the mail room first, as they will forward it to her. I received a quick reply back in a very irritated tone back that she had already checked with them and they did not get it and that I need to send her another item immediately or refund her money. Over the next 24 hours before I responded I did a little sleuthing via the internet. Why, because I had become irritated with this customer and had a suspicion that there might be something else going on.
I copied and pasted her name into Google and back came all the hits. Knowing which school I had sent the item to it was not hard to figure out who I was looking for. As silly as this sounds I felt she came from Chicago for some reason, it appears I was close, an outlying area. Wanting to be a famous dancer is great, but perhaps she needs to clean up her ghetto sounding profile on Facebook. This little background search, using nothing but publicly available items from the Google search set my mind, a refund would be best, not to mention with mail as slow as it was a week would not be long enough and expedited shipping would just add to my loss already.
I refunded her money and sent her communication that had refunded it. Mind you PayPal and Etsy both also send out refund notices. The next day I receive a nasty email demanding a refund or new item otherwise she would report me. As I typed out my response advising her against that action and hit send she had realized her money had been refunded as I got another email saying she saw the refund.
I had been polite and explained why I refunded the money (slow shipping times) and that I hoped she received the original mailing in time for Christmas. I figured all would be good. Three days later I logged into Etsy and to my shock saw she had left a negative review. In her eyes I spoke down to her (admittedly I was snarky ) and that I refused to refund her money until she forced me to. Excuse me! Etsy had not notified me of the negative revue, even with the exchange of emails their policy is the customer is always right and if too many people leave you a negative review then your account gets closed. Unless using their Kiss And Makeup feature (interpreted by me in this case as Kiss Her Ass feature) by sending the item expedited and hoping she will change her review.
I was not the only crafter to be hit by this scenario. It occurred enough times to fellow crafters that the information was being exchanged online through forums and other postings. Usernames were being blocked from stores before more losses were accrued.
So the lessons I learned:
Every year there will be one client that gets upset easily and will leave a negative review no matter how the situation is handled.
Etsy has an unreasonable review policy (which is their right)
Make sure your profiles are not publicly searchable, especially if there is a lot of questionable content in them.
In the end this too shall pass....

Happy New Year to everyone!