Recently I downloaded a song from iTunes. I never do this. I don’t “trust” downloading for some reason. I’m a million years old and buy CDs still. But they emailed me with a reminder that I still had a balance on a gift card someone had given me, literally, years and years prior. So they email me a receipt for the song. 2 days later they send me another receipt - for 4 more downloads of the same song! I go check my account and sure enough I’ve been charged for them. After about 20 minutes of clicking around their incomprehensible site I finally find the customer service link. Now, from what I’d read elsewhere on the site it seemed like their “return” policy was pretty much: “Tough luck - no returns” but I explained that OBVIOUSLY I didn’t intend to buy the same song 5 times. (I didn’t imply that the fault was theirs; it’s highly likely did it while I was drunk or something.) The next day a service agent emailed me to say I would be credited for the extra 4 songs. Then a couple days later I got a very nice follow-up email from the same service person following up that the matter had been resolved. That’s never happened to me ever! And to think this is over a matter of a few dollars.
From many many eons ago (pre-internet, even) I bought a few pieces of Bazooka gum. I’m reading the predictably lame comic and see along the side something like “this worth 10 points” or whatever and remember how you could save the comics and use them to “buy” equally lame stuff, like junk jewelry and all that. However, this comic didn’t have the usual bit in the corner with an item you could save up for. I wrote them a letter asking if there was some sort of catalog or something now for the prizes. They replied with package explaining that the program was being phased out, and included a gigantic box of Bazooka with it!
My grandmother was having trouble syncing her remote controls to her Comcast cable boxes due to some type of power outage malfunction. She put off calling tech support because she didn’t want to deal with the hassle and inevitable frustration, long wait, hangups, repetition and (cause she’s that way) “strange accents”. Well, I went up for a visit and forced her hand.
7pm on a holiday weekday - connected to Comcast right away, only transferred once to a very nice, very patient woman who was easily able to help us and even made my grandmother laugh once or twice.
I was quite impressed. Good job, Comcast.
The Kindle cover I ordered never showed up, despite showing as “delivered” on package tracking. I waited a couple of extra days just to be sure, then made a “package didn’t arrive” notification through their system. No questions or demands for proof, they just overnighted one to me and said, “keep the other one if it ever turns up.”
I bought a pair of earbuds this spring, and after several weeks the sound was cutting out intermittently. Of course I hadn’t kept the package or receipt once I’d tried them. I went to skullcandy.com to complain and found their warranty: If the product just craps out for no reason, send it in with your best guess of when and where you purchased it, and they send you a voucher for a replacement, which you order through the Web site. Can’t recall if they paid for shipping the defective buds back, and the whole process took a few weeks, but still: no receipt, no package, no proof of purchase, and I got a free replacement pair for maybe a few bucks. Nice, considering how easy it is to go through earbuds. At $20 or so a pop, it gets annoying.
Best Buy. I know a lot of people have bad experiences with them, but I had a really good one last Friday.
I had purchased a Blu-Ray player on black friday. All was good, until about a week later. I noticed that the sound would go out when the movie was about 70% finished. It happened on more than one disc, so I knew it was the player itself. I’d already thrown away the box it came in and thought I was probably out of luck. I took it in, and the young lady behind the counter listened to my story and checked her computer and said, “ok, hold on and I’ll get someone to bring a new one up”. Then, she said, “Do you have the remote that came with it?”. I didn’t actually… but she said, 'no problem, I’ll just take out the remote of the new one and you’ll be on your way". I was literally at the customer service counter for about 3 minutes before I had my new Blu-Ray player and was heading on my merry way.
Another vote for Amazon. They 2-day shipped a new Kindle Fire when mine crapped out within the first 5 minutes of opening the package. Then they emailed my mom (it was purchased by her as a gift) a shipping label, so we didn’t have to pay to ship back the defective one.
AT&T - I had recently added my husband to my family plan but didn’t change the plan terms to include more minutes. When I got my bill at the end of the month we had gone over the useage limits and the bill was $800 :eek: I went on the website to pay the bill and was trying to pay half that amount so I could pay the other half when I got paid next because I couldn’t afford $800 all at once. The website was acting all weird and I couldn’t get the transaction to go through so I had to call customer service.
I called, explained my problem with the web site. Explained that I needed to pay my bill in two installments because it was so expensive and while I had her on the phone could she change me to a family plan with more minutes per month so I didn’t get another ugly surprise.
She changed my rate plan and made it retroactive. $800 phone bill turned into a $200 phone bill. I was absolutely astonished because we had clearly used too many minutes. She didn’t have to let me off the hook for that extra $600 but said because I had trouble with the web site she was making my rate plan change retroactive. That was a huge relief because even in two installments $800 was going to be a burden that month.
I’ve heard from other people that AT&T sucks but I’ve had really good luck with their customer service.
One time, I called several times to figure out the ideal international plan for some travel I was making to Peru. The agent and I settled on whatever data plan, based on my past usage, and all was well.
Except when I got back from Peru, I had a $1000 phone bill.
So, I called CS and they told me that I had used 100 times more data than I ever had in the history of having my phone. When I pointed that out, she paused and removed every charge.
Back in 2005 or so, I was killing time in a layover in Guam. I noticed that the airport staff were carrying iDEN phones (the technology that Nextel used). I had never seen my Nextel phone roam, so I turned it on just to see it happen. (At the time, I worked in the division that made the phones). Turned the phone off, and went on my way.
Got back to the states two weeks later. Got my phone bill. It was large - I forget exactly how large, but they charged me international roaming for every incoming call that went straight to voice mail while my phone was turned off. Clearly a bug in the billing system.
I called Nextel, and was shocked when their response was “Ok. We’ll remove the charge. Sorry for the trouble.” I offered to go back and help them debug it, but they didn’t take me up on it.
-D/a
I had gotten a $10.00 credit for buying mumblety-mumble audio books over a period of time. I logged into my account today and saw it was gone. I called them to check on it, totally prepared to be told that it expired after XX days and that it was gone. If that was the case, I was totally prepared to suck it up and read the fine print more closely in the future.
While I was explaining to the customer service rep that if the offer had expired, I was ok, and would be more careful in the future, he interrupted me to say “Too late, I’ve already credited it back to your account.” :eek:
I thanked him profusely, promised to be more careful in the future, and promptly spent the credit on an audiobook (Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.)
We were discussing Amazon customer service over Christmas dinner, glowingly. I have too many good experiences to even list, suffice to say that Amazon is my go-to for pretty much everything. And with Prime you get next-to-instant gratification. It always annoys me to see a one star review that complains about shipping or delivery or a broken item- if they had contacted Amazon before going to whine about it the problem would have been resolved.
My mom and I were shopping at Ikea by Woodfield mall in IL and she was buying 4 small rugs as gifts that had a sign over them saying $4.99 (selected colors). They rung up at $12.99. We were using a self-serve register and called someone over to cancel the sale. I told the employee that there was a sign over them that said $4.99. She said “Still? We told them about this last week” then she adjusted the price for all four rugs. Yay!
I had a 10K race at the Metro Toronto Zoo a couple of years ago and my now-husband met me at the hotel the night before after his work. He said: “We have a problem. I blew a tire on the highway. So I can either drop you off at the race and get it changed so we can spend the day at the zoo together, or I can be there at the finish line for you but we’d have to leave right away to get the tire changed while the garages are still open.” I was disappointed but told him to go ahead and get the tire changed while I did the race.
So I finished the race and texted him and said “I’m done.” He texted back: “I’m looking right at you.”
Turned out he went to the Canadian Tire near the zoo and there was a 2 hour wait for service. He said, “I know this isn’t your problem, but my girlfriend is doing the 10K up at the zoo and it would really mean a lot to her if I was at the finish line. Is there any way we can speed this up?”
They had him in & out of there in 45 minutes and he ended up getting an awesome photo of me just before the finish line. I later sent an e-mail to Corporate and a thank-you card to that Canadian Tire location.
In general they’re quite good, but I’ve done returns before and I did have to pay shipping - both ways. These were for items that were shipped via Amazon Prime, if that’s relevant. In one case, I returned the item because it sucked (it was not just a “don’t want / need it” situation), and IIRC I still had to pay shipping.
I’ve heard they are willing to do this at least some of the time. Phew. I think they realize that yeah, they’l get the extra 600 bucks, but in x months when your contract renews, guess who you WON’T stay with.
We had unusual usage with our Verizon account a few months ago; Typo Knig was in an unusual work location and was using his phone a LOT more than usual (we have 500 minutes / month which is normally plenty). I happened to notice, halfway through the month, that the minutes were at 498… so was able to use the web page to change the allowance to 700; a week later when we were at THAT limit, I bumped it up again. Retroactive to the start of that billing period. Otherwise I guess we’d have paid overages for the first half of the month. The only quibble I have is there was no proactive notification about it, I just happened to log in on the “my Verizon” phone app.
That’s puzzling. The best Amazon example I can think of is when I sent Breaking Bad seasons 1 and 2 to one of my boys. The two DVDs were shrink wrapped together. Kid looked at it and thought he only got one season. I e-mailed Amazon, said he only got one DVD, and they immediately shipped a replacement.
In the meantime, the kid looked a bit closer and saw that they were right the first time – he had received what was ordered. He returned the replacement set and there was no shipping charge, either way, even though it was his mistake.
Heck, I returned a DVD set when I thought one of the discs wouldn’t play. Turned out the problem was with my player. They sent the replacement set even before I returned the set with the not-faulty disc. No shipping charges then either. I lurves Amazon.
Yup. Rule #1 - Be nice to the Customer Service people. They’re not the ones who caused your problem, they’re the ones you’re asking to fix it. As I told someone the other day who was screaming, swearing, making stupid threats while demanding a free out of warranty replacement: “Sir, you’re asking me for a big favor, and you’re not being nice”.
On that, Apple has really good service most of the time. My nephew cracked the screen of his iPod Touch and it was replaced without issue.
Only dealt with Amazon once and it was silky smooth to get resolved.
Another Amazon story, or in this case an Amazon marketplace seller.
I ordered a replacement power cord for my radar detector. Got the package in the mail and had clearly received someone else’s order, which happened to be a mounting bracket for the same detector. I contacted the seller through Amazon and within an hour received an e-mail acknowledging the mistake and telling me the cable was on its way via next-day shipping and to keep the bracket in case I ever needed a spare. Couldn’t have asked for better and faster service to correct the mix-up.