Zack made a video about this
I watched Zack's video on the subject.
"ALL SALES ARE FINAL- My Books Aren't War Bonds In Your Culture War"
A couple of observations:
Zack seems to think the entire world should revolve around him, his whims, and his problems. Zack's customers exist for the sake of Zack and whatever is most convenient for Zack's life and business model. It's very strange listening to a guy who used to talk about how Gen X people like him understand the realities of the world better than these Millenials and Zoomers, and this same guy sounds exactly like some entitled kid on TikTok complaining how all of his problems are everybody else's fault for not catering to all of his demands.
Zack thinks that somebody trying to cancel their order is an outrageous, unheard of concept "that would not fly in any other industry." He then proceeds to justify this assertion by talking about how on several occasions he has ordered something on Amazon only to immediately change his mind and try to undo that order, after which Amazon tells him that all sales are final.
(Apparently, Simple Zack cannot see the fallacy of his analogy. If you order something on Amazon, you are making that purchase with certain guarantees in mind. One of those guarantees is that you will receive your goods in a timely manner, and that if the merchant fails to provide your goods in a timely manner, you're entitled to a refund. Does Zack imagine that anybody is still waiting for a comic purchased via Amazon for two years with no recourse for a refund?)
Throughout the video Zack very indignantly and self-righteously insists that he has a real business, "a legitimate publishing company." He also mocks people who rely on parasocial relationships with their customers. But this entire video relies on an implied parasocial relationship between Zack and his customers, where his customers are just supposed to excuse all of his fuckups, because Zack is having this friend-to-friend chat with them.
No, Zack, you are not a real business when you tell your customers that they aren't entitled to refunds, because that would complicate your spreadsheet data.
You're not a real business when you tell people that they can't just expect you to not make mistakes with their orders, because you try and make the excuse that your brain starts to get loopy when you spend more than an hour trying to work with spreadsheet data. (How do other businesses manage their inventories???)
You are not a real business when you try and brag about how late your books are, because you claim that people who release books on time all have bad quality products, unlike yours' which are "fucking awesome." (As if nobody in the profession world is able to adhere to a release schedule.)
A legit business would send a polite letter to it's customers begging them to please excuse their mistakes and to be patient with them as they try and hurry to remedy the problem. A legit business would not create a video where they mock and attack their customers, while also offering a litany of excuses where the customer is just supposed to give the business a break, because business things are hard to do, ok.
