Two email queries in the in-tray just now:

Name: [withheld]
Email Address: [withheld]@hotmail.com
Message: Hello; I ordered the women’s earplug selection for a total of £16.40 on 30th May 2012 and never received them. Please let me know when you plan to resend as I ordered them over 8 months ago and have now moved!

And:

Name: [withheld]
Email Address: [withheld]@hotmail.com
Message: Hi I have had £4.82 (30:01:2013) taken out of my account for earplugs that I have not received. I had an email from you saying that the order had been cancelled as I had to pay by pay pal not by debit card, I was told in email that the £4.82 would be refunded but has not.
I have now noticed that another £16.00 has been taken from my account. Which seems to be for charges and commission this money was taken 11:02:2013.
I would like this money returned back into my account ASAP Total amount to be refunded £20.82.

Naturally we would be terribly apologetic if these two women had ordered and hadn’t received their goods, or had had money taken from their accounts. It’s not the kind of mistake any business likes to make.

However, our finely-tuned noses and spring-loaded brain cells are wise to such emails and something doesn’t ring true.

Notice how both women are very careful to spell out exactly how much money they think they’re owed. Notice, too, how they give precise dates on which the transactions occurred. Lots of similarities between the two emails.

But where are the order numbers? The transaction references from PayPal? What about the email we’re supposed to have sent cancelling the order and offering a refund? How on earth could we take money from someone’s account when we have no access to anyone’s PayPal or credit cards? Why did the first person leave it 8 months to inform us her order hadn’t arrived? Why does she refer to moving house – as if that’s at all relevant?

They both use untraceable hotmail accounts. Careful searching on Google suggests that one of them appears to have an unused Twitter account and that the other may (or may not) reside in Albania and be active on Skype. We don’t like to speculate what she does on it.

It was important that we checked our files, as we’d hate to have overlooked something. Fortunately our record-keeping is second to none. In fact our accountant is in awe of our ability to keep our books straight. So it was a matter of seconds before we were able to determine for certain (as we already guessed) that neither of them has ever ordered from Snorestore. Not with those names, not with those email addresses. Not on those dates. Not with those amounts. In fact, they’re invisible as far as Snorestore is concerned.

There are three possibilities:

1) they ordered from a different online earplugs store entirely and have got confused;
2) we’ve made a massive mistake and the arrival of those emails back to back is coincidence;
3) well why don’t you make up your own minds? We’re pretty sure we know what’s going on.

We have of course emailed both women and asked for further details – order numbers, transactions references, copies of emails, their addresses. Unsurprisingly, neither of them has replied. If they do, we’ll amend this post accordingly. If they don’t, we’ll amend the post anyway and include their names and email addresses. Just in case they try the same thing on you.