Here are some public kudos for the folks at The Japan Shop. This kind of prompt service and going the extra mile was greatly appreciated.
Late Friday, I was looking for two books that are a little hard to find. One was of a more urgent nature than the other. I was having some trouble finding them at a reasonable price, but finally I found both of them at The Japan Shop. The less pressing one was in stock, so I put in an order. The other was not in stock, but there was a mechanism for the company to notify me when the item was available.
As luck would have it, I received an e-mail the next day, Saturday. At night I purchased the book, and in the “Customer Notes” section I wrote,
If order #13815 hasn’t been sent out yet, it’d be nice to combine this order with that…however, that’d just be a convenience. Otherwise, just send order as-is. Thanks!
I received an e-mail a scant five minutes later saying that they should be able to combine the orders, even though the first one was probably packed already.
The next morning, Sunday, I received an e-mail stating that they were refunding the shipping on the first order. I received notification that the order went out Monday morning, which included a link to the USP site. There I could add my e-mail to receive shipping updates. I received notification that it was delivered to my mail box on Wednesday.
Many thanks to Clay Boutwell for making the transaction such a pleasant experience.