Background: I ordered some stuff from a website.  I have ordered from this website many times before, and shipping has always been included on the original invoice with the cost of the products ordered.  A month after delivery, I received a bill from the freight shipping company telling me that I owed them $100 for shipping of my order.  I told them to bill the shipper.  They said no, that I had signed a delivery receipt and that the shipper bore no responsibility for the charges.

My response.

Hi Beverley,

I signed a receipt to say that I received the merchandise… not to indicate that I agreed to pay charges. That’s what one typically does upon receipt of a shipment, and in a court of law I feel that it would be extremely difficult for you to claim otherwise, regardless of what might have been printed in tiny type on the receipt itself.

If you want to mark it refused to pay that is technically correct, although I feel that the actual objection is more nuanced, i.e. I consider it not my responsibility to pay and refuse to pay both on principle, and so as to protest and discourage this kind of ex post facto billing.

I totally understand that you are caught in the middle here and I don’t think you’re to blame. If you do a lot of business with MCM you may want to see if they can put something on their order pages that’s large and bold and hopefully red or something that notes that shipping is not included and could end up being any amount.

Note to MCM (CC’d) — I do a lot of business with you and this is, pardon my french, bullshit.

Thanks,
Samantha