Is it me? am very upset at this. what should i do?

[stitchtime]

last month, ds wanted teh paper deliverd. so i asked at the local post office, round the corner from me, how much th epaper was to be deliverd. he said ten pounds a month. i was very surprised at this. i said why is it so cheap? he said 2.50 a week. so i said fine. gave him my name and address. and we started having it deliverd.
last week, got the bill. it was ten pounds a week.
for various reasons, havent been able to go there till righ tnow with ds2 in tow. the man said it was 2.50 a week plus the cost of the newspaper, which to be honest makes more sense. but, at that price, i cannot affford it. and he had told me it was ten a monthwhich was why i had agreed to have it. he said, yes, it was ten a month, and it was common sense that the cost of the paper was on top. i joked that perhaps i didnt have enough common sense. that was when i mentioned abou tnot being able to afford that much.
he then said i was being silly again, and didnt have common sense. i asked him if he was being rude to me. he said he wasnt being rude, but i had had delivery of the papers, and it cost that much. i said, yes, but you told me it was going ot cost ten a month, adn when i queried it, you said it was 2.50 a week. so i then removed a ten pound note from my wallet to pay him. and he became rude. he said i hadnt queried it, and it was ten a month for delivery plus the cost of the paper( which i agree makes more sense) but he said i was silly if i thought that was all it costs. i told him again he was being rude to me. he said that was what it cost, and i had agreed to it, and not queried it, which i had. i asked if he was calling me a liar. he said i was calling him a liar.
at this point, i thought i need to leave. he got his books out, and started doing stuff, whilst telling me i was refusing to pay him for the papers i had recieved. and he wasnt going to get rich with forty pounds, and i wasnt going to get poor with forty pounds. i was grabbing hold of ds2's hand and leaving, he tried to throw the note at me, and yelled at me not to comeback to his shop.

so. now i am very upset. bbut am i in the wrong? is it me? last year i had an altercation with another shopkeeper who accused ds1 of shoplifting. is it my fault? or was this man out of order. thisis my local post office, and i will need to go there from time to time.
what should i do?

Sorry this has happened. It did sound confusing, he should have made it absolutely clear. I would pay up and cancel the order. Post cheque to him recorded delivery if you don't want to go there. Include covering letter to say you feel he has been unclear and unreasonable and you will be shopping elsewhere. Polite and to the point. If you do need to go there for stamps etc, just act cool, as if you don't know him, and don't rise to any comments he may make. HTH x

PS don't be upset, you were the customer here and he should not have been rude to/ shouted at you.

it does.
i also feel so embarassed . that is th elocal post office. there are other people i know there. i dont normally worry about what the neighbours think, but i have no desire to give them stuff to gossip about. iyswim.
the cheque will have to be not till next month, as i honestly cannot afford it right now.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying - you agree that £2.50 a week, plus the cost of your papers is reasonable (and apparently what you're supposed to be paying) - but you can't afford it? Did you really think £10 a month would cover everything you had delivered, plus delivery costs?

Pay up, then cancel your order, and send DS to fetch the paper of a morning if he wants it that much.

What paper was it? If delivery is £2.50 a week and the total bill is £10 a week, that means the paper itself costs £7.50 a week. Didn't it strike you as odd that paper plus delivery was a third the price of going into the post office and buying the same paper yourself?

Well whilst he was very rude I am a bit surprised you thought that papers for a month only cost £10 with or without delivery.

Personally I think you should pay up and take your business elsewhere.

Don't worry about gosspip, people must have more important things to worry about that your paper order, if not they are very sad people! If you can't pay until next month, maybe post a note explaining that you intend to settle your debt and when it will be. You could maybe enclose a £5 as an interim payment / gesture of goodwill? I am just worried for you in case he gets funny and starts sending you reminder letters etc.

I can understand him getting annoyed when he clearly pointed out your error, but then you still tried to only pay him £10.

You should have apologised, cancelled your order, and told him the date you'd be able to settle the bill.

Actually YABU. Even if the newspaper you ordered was the daily mail which is 50p per day, plus 80 pence Saturday and £1.50 Sunday that equals £4.80 so clearly it's not £2.50.

You need to

1. pay the poor man the money you owe him at once and apologise for your mistake.

1. tell your son to either walk down the shop and buy his own newspaper or read it online for free

That poor shop owner is probably really feeling the pinch right now and the last thing on earth he needs is someone trying to tell him that they ought to have £4 or £5 worth of his stock, for £2.50.

YABU and silly.

Sorry, so why did you get a bill for £10pw?

He should have made it more clear. Not everyone would have assumed that the cost of the newspaper was on top of the delivery charge. I can be pretty pathetic when it comes to maths and I probably wouldn't have used common sense at all, but then I'd have told dh who would have put me right!

However, you've had the paper delivered every day for a month and I'm sorry but you do owe that amount to him. I would pay for the month's collection and cancel the order. After all, I suppose he does have to pay the paperboy/girl.

Were you, at any point, going to pay him for the month's delivery? Because I think that if he thought you were trying to get out of paying then he may well have been rude because of that. That doesn't justify his behaviour however and he could have tried harder to sort something out with you rather than just be aggressive.

This is a tough one, but if I were you, I would write a note explaining that you are having a very hard time atm, that you are sorry you didn't pay him. Put a tenner in and say in the note that you'll try and pay for the full month when you can, but you'd appreciate it if he wouldn't be so aggressive next time he sees you because you are not a conman. You made a simple mistake, you are human, you are trying to rectify that and could do with a break.

Good post Rhubarb.

nametaken, not nice to call OP silly, unreasoinable maybe, but she is clearly upset and as Rhubarb said a lot of us are rubbish at mental aritmetic, I had to think for ages before working out if £10 would cover it or not!

I have to say that I would have had no idea at all if I had been in the situation...

I haven't bought a newspaper in literally 20 years, and when I did they cost 29p, so 50p a day to have a newspaper delivered wouldn't have seemed odd to me..and you always see adverts for papers at 10p on the TV - I HONESTLY wouldn't have had the slightlest clue what they cost and if someone had said to me it was £10 a month to have a paper delivered I'd have thought exactly the same as you.

I guess the problem is you asked what it cost to be delivered - and he has told you the delivery cost. Not an unreasonable action on his part to actually answer the question. However, there was clearly a misunderstanding but you can't possibly withold payment on those grounds - aren't we supposed to be saving local POs and all that?

He could have been kinder though and offered to work something out with her. There never is an excuse for rudeness, esp since she had her ds in tow.

I would address the note to the Manager btw. It may well be him, but it may also not be. Admit your mistake but say you walked out because you were embarrassed and upset by his rudeness, that should shame him a little.

well i think you were being a little bit silly re cost, but he also sounds very rude. just pay the bill and forget about it..

There has been a misunderstanding here, sorry you are upset, he doesn't have the skills at dealing with customers to sort it out without being rude. It's best to pay up and tell him you are sorry for the misunderstanding - that is not apologising for yourself, you are just saying sorry that this happened.

I think it would have been better for cusomer goodwill for him to have accepted your £10, if you stop going in there and he loses a customer, added up over a long time, this is alot of money to lose if you are popping in there for milk/bread/stamps whatever.

sorry but i think YABU

you went in there to pay the money you owed him... i expect he was expecting to be paid and you then walk out (or go to walkout) without settling the bill.

The money was / is rightfully his.

ok you made a mistake (and we all make those ) but every paper i have ever seen has the price on it on the cover so working out its more than £2.50 a week is not rocket science when the papers themselves cost more.

i would go back in and agree to pay half now and half next month and aplogise for the misunderstanding. Hopefull you may get an aplogy back too.

I agree you are the customer and there is no excuse for rudeness at all, but perhaps he was having a bad day and needed the money? im sure you wouldnt appreciate being paid late either

i have literally, never bought a paper before. when he told me it cost ten pounds amonth, i thought it was cheap, which is why i asked him again. when he confirmed that was what it cost, then i accepted it, and thought fine, ds can have his paper if he wants it.
obviously there was a misunderstanding. as i discovered when the bill came.
this man was rude. he told me i lacked common sense. the first time he said it, i ignored it, as i felt that i had recived a service, and should pay for it. however when he proceeded to call me first silly, then a liar. and ignored me when i said that i could not afford to pay that much, even as i was taking money out to pay him. i felt all that was unacceptable.
a simple acknowledgement of the misunderstanding. a cancellation of the daily paper, and an agreement to allow me to pay the bill over the next few weeks would have been sufficient to resolve the situation amicably.
throwing the money at me as i was leaving with ds, yelling at me to not come back to his shop again, after having called me a liar, is unnaceptable imo.

Paragraphs would be a great help to an auld gal like me.

YABU
pay the bill and put it down to experience

He was rude, but it was your misunderstanding. When he confirmed that the £10 a month was for delivery and didn't include the cost of the paper you still wanted to only pay him £10 anyway, which I imagine made him see red.

In terms of what you should do, obviously you need to pay your bill. If you don't want to go back in you could write with the money, or with some of the money and confirmation of when you can give the rest, if you can't give it all at once.

There is no excuse for rudeness in my opinion, but you should pay the rest of what you owe so you can go back into the shop with a clear concience.

Chalk it up to experience and just remember that people are rude and stroppy some times.

You have no right not to pay him.

You asked for a service. That service was carried out. You were the one who misunderstood... you asked him how much it was for delivery each week..he said £2.50/£10 per month. That's how much the delivery is without the cost of the papers...

I know he went about it the wrong way, but surely common sense would dictate that £2.50 a week isn't enough to cover the price of a paper and delivery?

I pay £1.50 to have my local paper delivered 6 days a week. That price includes the paper and the delivery.

He probably thought you were trying to have him on- he doesn't actually sound like he was being rude just exasperated. He probably has lots of people trying to get out of paying for things.
YOu need to go in and apologise and pay the bill.