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?

well YANBU

i would be like you

in retrospect it 's easy to see it is too cheap - but at the time - you simply did not think it through

( a similar thing happened with us and the weeklyg uardian roundup we ordered for our ds actually)

you will have to pay up

IIWY i would write a polite and ever so slightly grovelly note with the cheque - small town and all - worth a little bite of the tongue x

connie, as i said to him initially, before he started being rude, 'perhaps i am lackingn common sense?'

okie, can someone write something for me? because my brain has gone to mush. i dont think i should write a grovelly letter, as i am very annoyed at how he yelled at me as i was leaving.
Dear sir madam,
I am writing to you about the delivery of the daily paper to me at this address.
I spoke to one of your staff about a month ago to arrange it and was told it would be ten pounds a month for delivery. I thought this very cheap, so queried it, but was reassured that this was the cost. On this understanding i arranged to have daily delivery.
However, it appears that there was a problem in communication. i now understand that whilst the cost of the delivery is indeed ten pounds a month, this is in addition to the daily cost of the paper, the total of which comes to ten pounds a week. Had i known this at the time, i would not have arranged to have the paper delivered to my home address, as this is more than i am able to pay.
I came in to your business, and spoke to a member of your staff, hoping to settle this matter amicably, and cancel the delivery. He was extremely rude to me, telling me i was lacking in 'common sense' and calling me a 'liar'. He also threw the ten pound note that i tried to give him as part payment at me, and told me 'dont come back to my shop'.
All this in front of my seven year old son, who was watching in amazement.
At no point did i say i was not going to pay for the services that i have recieved. i tried to point out, politely, that i was misinformed of the cost, but was instead met with rudeness, and attitude.
I do not believe this is appropriate customer service, and trust that you will deal with this. i will of course pay the remainder of the account, within the next month.

does that sound ok? how do i end it?

that sounds great

end it with kind regards stitchtime

thanks nannyl.
any additions? or ommisions? please let me know, i will check again in the mronig, before moving it to word, and printing it out.

our local paper is 43p a day but delivered direct is only £8 a month so can understand your confusion I don't think you are being silly just wanted to add some support

Erm. I think he thought he was about to lose £40 quid, which he could as ill afford to lose as you. And that you might have started to tell him he was being rude before he was actually being rude (sorry).

I suspect it was your accusations of rudeness which escalated things; and I'm afraid you were being a bit silly thinking that having a paper delivered was going to be a quarter of the cost of buying it in a shop.

I am a MAD complainer btw. Often threaten to call Trading Standards/Watchdog/Interpol. But I do think you might be on shaky ground I'm afraid.

The letter and the OP paint two very different pictures of what happened.

Did you actually owe him ten or forty pounds? If you owed forty and got ten out of your purse, you can see why he thought you weren't prepared to pay for the rest of the bill.

He was rude, yes, but your letter seems to be trying to get him into trouble as if you had no part in what happened.

Why can't you just send a letter saying that there has been a misunderstanding about the cost and that you intend to settle the bill within the next month. No need to go into details.

I think you should just send a cheque to be honest.

You asked for the cost of delivery, you were told the cost of delivery. You have misunderstood and whilst it may not have been dealt with as you would like, as others have said, he was probably very worried about not being paid! Just pay, forget the letter, you probably won't be taken seriously as you owe them money.

Agree with dearprudence, your letter doesn't reflect the situation as you described it in your OP. You weren't misinformed of the cost, you just misunderstood, and it doesn't sound from your OP as though you were offering £10 in part payment, it sounds as though you were insisting that you should still only pay £10 and were offering that as full payment.

Just write enclosing a cheque to settle the bill, apologising for the misunderstanding, don't go into huge detail.

I agree with others, your letter does not give an accurate account of what you said happened in your OP.
Just pay the man his money, it was your mistake.

Your letter is ridiculous. Just write a letter apologing for the misunderstanding, enclose a cheque and be done with it. YOU were in the wrong. YOU misunderstood. YOU tried to pay a £40 bill with a £10 note.

If she can't pay it all in one go, she can't. Stitchtime - I would remove "in amazement" from par 5, and "and attitude" from par 6. Enclose as much as you possibly can pay, and then add to the letter the date(s) you're going to make up the balance. And then make sure you pay on time.

Agree that the man was rude but I can see where he was coming from. He probably found it unbelievable that you thought that £10 a month included the newspaper. He probably thought that you were trying it on.

When he tried to correct your misunderstanding, you did not offer to pay him, even though you knew it was your fault. I think that if I was in his situation I think would have thought that you were lying to get out of paying, although I wouldn't have said it.

You are in the wrong and you know you are. I think you need to pay up. If he told you to get out of his shop, it is probably his own business anyway.

YABU

I think your letter reflects how you wish it had been in the shop with ref to your own actions and not what actually did happen. You are upset because you are embarrassed IMO and the man was not sweet and forgiving towards you. Settle your bill as soon as you can and write a brief note setting out the timescale for this.

thank you all for your opinions.
i wont apologise, because i dont believe i owe him or anyone anapology.
i do expect an apology for being spoken toso rudely. however i understand that is unlikely to happen.
i wont be returning to either his shop. or that of any other small local business if that is how they are going to deal with customers. telling me something is only going to cost a fraction of the actual cost, isnt good business, or customer service. and then telling me i have no common sense, is even less.
yes, he probably was having a bad day. and yes, i probably did accuse him of being rude, before he thought he was being rude. but imo he was already being rude. i have been going into that shop for almost eight years now, and do not believe this has happened, after all this time. if this is how local businesses behave, then quite frankly they dont deserve our custom.
thank you longtall, i shall change those words.
right, rant over, time to get on

"i wont be returning to either his shop. or that of any other small local business .."

Good lord.

If I had made a cock up like this I would have started by apologizing. Especially if I was then going to have to ask a favour and pay over time. I am surprised that newspaper shops still get payment in arrears to be honest (any other delivery and you pay up front). I think you made a foolish mistake and you were embarrassed and you didn't handle the conversation well. It is difficult when you are put on the spot, especially in front of your child and I can quite understand why you felt very awkward and reacted badly.

But it is not the shop owners fault that you didn't have enough money to pay, and if you brought up "common sense" it is perhaps not surprising that he used the phrase back to you. Yes it would have been a good idea if he had handled things better, but to him it probably appeared that you were intending to default on 3/4 of the bill, leaving him out of pocket for paying the newspaper company and his delivery person. Your letter will only stir things up further as if he said don't come back to my shop, he probably is the owner. Just pay up and be a little more careful another time. These things happen to us all at one time or another.

Actually, just re-reading what stitch has said. She had taken out ten pounds with which to offer him a payment and he THREW it at her and told her not to enter his shop again?

If he was that hard-up you'd have thought he would have taken the £10 and told her that she needed to pay the rest whenever she could. You don't throw someone's money back at them.

And if he told her never to enter his shop again, how is she supposed to pay him? She wasn't shoplifting folks, she had already admitted her mistake, she did not deserve to be subjected to that kind of abuse.

On second thoughts stitch, leave the money. You offered him a part-payment and he has refused and banned you from his shop. So if he wants the rest of the money, I suggest you wait until he contacts you.

That is no way to treat a customer.

Sounds like he's written off your debt and in return never wants you to darken his door. Seems a fair deal to me.

If you want to shop there again you're going to have to swallow it and apologise for the misunderstanding and pay him.

I'd also pay him the whole amount. Offering to pay £40 in instalments is pathetic. You say you can't afford it - have you wondered about the state of his finances or do you think he's a charity?

Be thankful he only threw your £10 note at you - my local shoemender has been known to throw finished shoes at people who quibble on the price. This has never happened to me because I pay up for a good service, but I suspect my shoemender and your newsagent get lots of quibblers.

Am I the only one who thinks the OP WNBU?
Places do these offers all the time - we recently got FIL a magazine subscription for less than a third of the usual price. That sort of thing might have been what was happening - an offer for people who are getting delivery for the first time - less likely for a small shopkeeper I agree but I don't know how these things work.
OK, she now owes the money and should pay but I don't think she was being an idiot to begin with, and I can understand the frustration, having checked the price twice, in now being told she owes a lot more

Is it not common sense when someone asks about having a paper delivered to at least mention whether the cost includes the paper or not? Seems like the OP was not the only one lacking common sense!

"or that of any other small local business if "

Now that would be a shame and very unfair. Small local businesses can ill afford that atm and most of them don't deserve it. The fact that he was so rude indicates to me that he really assumed you weren't going to pay and got upset. Most small businesses like that operate on a shoestring. Our local paper shop is fantastic and provides a good service in lots of ways.

The letter is fine btw.

Subscription services are with the publishers, and you pay up front. They are big companies that can afford to sweeten their deals. I doubt very much whether a local newsagent could do the same. I've certainly never heard of it. But then I don't know many people who have papers delivered any more. It's not unreasonable to make a mistake. We all do at times, but I do think that when you make a mistake you have to be a bit gracious about it.

Started reading this thread thinking YANBU and that OP had just made a mistake and both OP and shopkeeper could have handled situation better. However after going through whole thread think that OP is BU.

Stitchtime - you say in your last post that he told you that it cost fraction of the actual cost, so are you now trying to say that he intentionally misled you? You also say in your letter that you offered the £10 as part payment but in your OP it sounds as if you were just giving him it with no mention of paying the balance at a later date. I think you need to get your story straight if you want to be taken seriously.

YANBU!

No one should be that rude to another person, especially over a misunderstanding.

Perhaps if he had better customer relations and communication skills (which i feel is paramount in this line of work) then the rudeness, aggression and upset could have been avoided.

The misunderstanding should have been identified and a suitable solution found.

GOOD LETTER!