Wow, I just came across this thread today and I have to say...I'm kinda shocked that something like this even got posted on here! And I know this was a few weeks ago, but I feel I should still post my side of the story to clear the air on what happened.
Here is exactly what went down: last month when Al was out here for DS we were playing a round together, and he mentioned that he was looking for some new shafts & grips. I told him that I'm a Hireko dealer and I offered to get him whatever he needs at my wholesale cost. I was just trying to do a favor as a friend, obviously not as a "business" transaction because I wasn't going to be making any money on anything. He called me a few weeks later to tell me that he wanted 12 Apollo Phantom shafts & 12 Pure grips, and I told him Hireko was backordered on the shafts (I was planning to just drop-ship everything to him straight from Hireko), but I said I had 9 of the shafts on hand (which would deplete my stock to 0 for the next month) and I could get the grips directly from Pure - who is 20 minutes down the road from me - and just ship everything to him myself. He said he'd take the 9 shafts & 12 grips for now, and I told him I'd send the other 3 shafts once Hireko gets them back in stock - which would most likely be mid to late October. So I sent him a PayPal invoice, again selling him everything at my exact cost (about a 40% discount off the regular price!), not marking anything up even a penny. When I shipped his stuff out I went in back where I keep my new shafts and grabbed the last 9 Phantoms shafts out of their bin, checked the labels on the butt end to make sure they were all Phantom shafts (which they were), bundled them up with rubber bands, put them in a box along with the 12 grips that I had picked up for him from Pure, and shipped them out. I never noticed that one of the shafts had been previously installed & pulled, but honestly I didn't inspect everything too closely - nor did I feel the need to - because I had pulled them out of the new shaft bin where I keep nothing but new shafts. And the shaft in question was the same length as the other shafts so it had never been tip or butt trimmed, so I had no reason to think any of them weren't brand new. I guess I should have looked at all the tips more closely.
Anyhow, the following Friday I get an email from Al saying he got the shafts "...but to be quite honest, I'm very disappointed. One of the shafts is used. It still has epoxy residue on it! I paid for a NEW Shaft and got something else. What Gives?" That email was sent to me late Friday afternoon, which is my busiest time of the week trying to hurry and finish everything up before the weekend, so I didn't even see it until the following day. But I did get back to it the very next day (Saturday) to let him know it was just a simple mistake, and that I obviously didn't intent to send him a used shaft. I told him that a used shaft must have somehow gotten into that bin when it clearly should have been in the other room with all of the pull-out shafts. I know I wouldn't have put that there, so maybe one of my guys did, or another possibility is that we had just moved our entire shop the week before and it may have been put in the wrong place during the move. Not the end of the world, either way I told him I'd absolutely replace it at no cost (even though it's obviously still a perfectly usable shaft, which he got at quite a substantial discount to what they would normally cost new). And just the other day I emailed him to let him know Hireko got them back in stock and I would be shipping it out to him.
So there you have it. All the drama of simple mistake of a shaft getting put into the wrong bin at the shop, and for some reason I wasn't given the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake that I would gladly fix. Not sure why this had to get aired out on a public forum.