When the delivery is not what you ordered

The van is at your door and the goods are not the ones you ordered. Decide standing up, before you sign. Once the cartons are inside and your name is on the bill, a wrong item stops being his mistake and becomes your stock. There are three answers, and about two minutes to pick one.

The van at the door, and the two minutes you get

Quarter past nine on a Tuesday. The shutter is half up, the floor is still wet from washing, and Rafiq the driver already has the first carton on his shoulder. You ordered twenty four packs of one kilo washing powder. What is coming off the van is forty packs of five hundred grams.

He does not stop walking. He says the sentence every driver says. "Same item, same rate. The one kilo was finished at the depot, so they sent this."

You have about two minutes. That is how long it takes him to build a wall of cartons between your feet and the van door. After that, sending it back means restacking, and you will not restack with three customers waiting at the counter.

So decide while you are still standing. The question is not whether the substitute is a bad item. Plenty of substitutes are good. The question is narrower: would you have ordered this item, in this size, at this rate, if he had phoned the night before and asked? If the honest answer is no, the van being outside does not make it a yes.

Three answers, and when each one is right

You can refuse it and put it back on the van. You can keep it at a rate you change on the bill there and then. Or you can keep it at full rate, because it is an item you would have bought anyway.

The third is the easiest and the most expensive. Easy because it needs no conversation. Expensive because you pick it out of tiredness rather than arithmetic.

Four tests decide it. What does it cost per unit, not per line. How long does it keep. Does your street ask for this size, this brand, this colour. And what does your answer teach the supplier about next time.

Three answers at the door, and what each one costs

Pick it whenWhat it costs you

Send it back on the vanPick it whenIt costs more per unit, keeps for less time, or your street does not buy that size or colour.What it costs youAn empty shelf for a few days, and a driver who has to load it back.

Keep it at a rate agreed on the spotPick it whenIt will sell, but slower or at a smaller margin than the item you ordered.What it costs youA harder two minutes at the door, and a change written on his own bill.

Keep it at the full ratePick it whenYou would have ordered this item at this rate anyway, and it moves as fast.What it costs youNothing today. But he learns that swapping your order costs him nothing.

The test you keep forgettingPick it whenHow long the item keeps, and how long your money sits inside it.What it costs youSlow goods are cheaper goods. If the rate did not drop, you paid for the delay.

Run the four and the answer usually picks itself. An item that costs more per kilo, keeps four months instead of a year, and is a colour nobody asks for has failed three tests. That goes back, even if the driver sighs. An item that fails only on demand is a keep at a lower rate: you will sell it, just slower, and slower stock deserves a lower buying price.

The bill is the real fight

The goods are the argument for two minutes. The bill is the argument for the next two months.

One rule covers it. The bill must describe what came off the van, in the quantity that came, at the rate you agreed. Not the order. Not the usual. What is standing on your floor.

Break it and you pay twice: once for goods you never received, and again weeks later when the only paper in the room is a bill you signed.

Say five lines come off the van and three of them are right

Cooking oil, 12 tins of 5 litres at Rs 1,650Rs 19,800

Tea, 40 packs of 250g at Rs 260Rs 10,400

Soap, 6 cartons at Rs 1,140Rs 6,840

Washing powder: his own label, billed at the ordered brand's Rs 340 x 24Rs 8,160

Gram flour ordered: 12 packs of 1kg at Rs 400 (12kg)Rs 4,800

Gram flour delivered: 20 packs of 500g at Rs 240 (10kg)Rs 4,800

Bill total, unchanged, with 2kg less flour and a brand nobody asked forRs 50,000

Three of those five lines are clean. The fourth swapped the brand and kept the rate, so the total is right to the rupee while the tin on your shelf is not the tin customers ask for. The fifth hides in plain sight: the line total is Rs 4,800 either way, so your eye slides past it, and you have paid Rs 480 a kilo for what you buy at Rs 400.

The fix costs one pen and thirty seconds. Cross out the line, write what came, the count and the rate. You initial it, the driver initials it, and he carries his copy away with the same marks. If he will not mark his own copy, that is your answer about the whole delivery. It matters most when you buy on credit, because that bill is also the entry landing on your page in his ledger, and buying stock on credit rests on those two pages matching.

Substitutions that look equal and are not

Three kinds turn up again and again, all built to pass a tired glance.

The smaller pack at the same case price. A case of twelve one kilo bags becomes a case of half kilo bags at the same case rate. That is fair only if the count is exactly double, and it rarely is. Twenty packs of five hundred grams is ten kilos where you paid for twelve.

The variant nobody asks for. Same brand, same size, different flavour or colour or scent. The rate is genuinely identical, so it feels like no loss. Then it sits. A colour your street does not buy is not stock, it is money parked on a shelf, and that is how dead stock is born, one harmless looking swap at a time.

The older date. The quietest one. Same item, same rate, three months further along its life. You lose nothing today and lose the selling time later, which is the part that turns into a discount.

None of these is a swindle. Most start at a depot where one man is filling forty orders and yours is number thirty one. That is why the answer is a habit, not an argument.

Saying no while he is standing there

Thursday, four in the afternoon. Iqbal brings six cartons of biscuits. You ordered the orange pack, the one your school customers finish by Friday. Four cartons are green.

He is polite and he is in a hurry, and those two together are what talk shopkeepers into things.

Saying no while the driver is in a hurry

1. 1Stop the unloading before the second carton landsRead the label on the first one. Cartons on the floor are half a signature already.
2. 2Say it in one short sentence"Two cartons stay, four go back." Long sentences invite bargaining.
3. 3Give a reason about your customers, not about him"My street buys the orange one. The green will sit."
4. 4Call the supplier now, on speaker, in front of himAfter the driver leaves, the same call is only a complaint.
5. 5Correct both copies of the bill, then signWhat came, the count, the rate. Your initials and his, on both papers.

Keep your sentences short. "Two cartons stay, four go back." Not a speech, not a complaint about the depot. Long sentences invite negotiation. Short ones close it.

Give a reason that is about your customers, never about him. "My street buys the orange one. The green will sit." He cannot argue with your customers. He can argue all day with your opinion of his company.

Then end it. Call the supplier while the driver stands in front of you, on speaker. "Sajid, Iqbal is here. He has four cartons of green and I ordered orange. Do I keep two and send four back, or do you want all six?" Sajid answers in twenty seconds, the driver hears it himself, and nobody carries a different version of the conversation home.

Made after he leaves, that call is a complaint. Made in front of him, it is a decision.

The supplier who does it every time

One wrong delivery is a depot mistake. The fourth is a system, and it needs a different fix.

Write the order down and read it back. Every order, even the small one you place standing in the doorway. Size, count, brand, variant, rate, then the total. Many substitutions die right there, because the man on the other end now has to say "no" out loud before he swaps anything.

Order by size and variant, never by item name. "Six washing powder" is an invitation. "Six cartons, one kilo packs, twenty four to a carton, the blue one" is not. A vague order lets the supplier choose for you, and he chooses whatever is heaviest in his godown.

Then watch the direction. Real mistakes wander both ways. If every swap for six months has been smaller, older, or dearer per unit, that is not a busy depot. Say it once, plainly, and start splitting the line with a second supplier. You do not have to leave him. You do have to stop being his only outlet for what will not move, and one supplier or several is the choice underneath it.

The wrong stock you decided to keep

Some of it you will keep, and that can be right. What ruins it is then treating it as normal stock.

Price it on what it actually cost. If the half kilo packs worked out at Rs 480 a kilo, they do not get the shelf price your Rs 400 stock gets. Either the price goes up or the margin comes down, and you choose which on purpose. That is where pricing what you sell stops being theory.

Give it a place people can see. Odd stock pushed to the back shelf is stock you have decided not to sell. Front of the counter for two weeks, beside the item people came in for.

And set a date on the carton with a marker. Six weeks, eight weeks, whatever suits the item. After it, this is no longer new stock but a clearing problem, and clearing problems get a lower price and a spot near the door.

The record makes it easier. When both sizes live as variants under one product, a size swap shows as its own line instead of hiding inside a total, and the buy rate stays on the item that actually arrived. Wasoolo keeps each supplier his own page too, so what he delivered and what is still owed sit side by side when you place the next order. That decides nothing for you. It only means the next argument is short, because the paper is already on your side.

Common questions

The driver says he cannot take goods back on the van. Is that true?

Sometimes it is his company's rule, sometimes it is just easier for him. Either way it is not yours to solve. Say plainly that you will not sign for goods you did not order, and ask him to call his office. Unsigned goods left with you are still his.

He has already unloaded everything before I noticed. What now?

Do the paper before he drives off. Count what is wrong, mark it on both copies of the bill, and photograph the marked copy with his signature. Goods under a corrected, initialled bill are a very different position from the same goods under a clean one.

Is it worth refusing a delivery over one wrong line out of five?

You are not refusing the delivery, you are refusing one line. Keep the four that are right, send back the wrong one, correct that line on the bill. Treating it as all or nothing is how shopkeepers end up keeping everything.

The substitute is genuinely the same rate and the same size. Should I still make a fuss?

No fuss, but still a note. Write the actual brand on the bill so your record shows what is really on the shelf. When a customer asks two months later why the packet looks different, you will know which delivery brought it.

How do I stop the same swap on the next order?

Read the order back before you hang up, and put the size and variant into the order itself rather than the item name. Then check the next delivery closely, because it tells you whether he listened.

He offers a small discount to keep the wrong goods. Is that a fair deal?

It can be, if the number is worked out and not felt. Ask what the item costs per unit after the discount, and whether it sells as fast as what you ordered. Slower stock has to be cheaper, because your money sits inside it longer. If the reduced rate never reaches the bill, there is no deal.