For once, a happy customer service story

We had been plagued with a noisy water heater since it hit its one-year anniversary. Honestly, it sounded like someone was playing kettle drums inside it every time someone turned on a hot water tap in the house. We Googled about a bit to see if this was a repairable thing, as we did not want to buy and install a new heater quite yet. Somehow we happened upon this guy’s website. He promises to clean out, silence and increase the efficiency of water heaters. And lo and behold, he was located ten miles from us.

When he came, he said that most plumbers know that water heaters can be serviced in this manner, but they keep mum about it because they’d rather sell you a new heater and charge you a fat price to install it. Then he went about flushing and scraping the heater and installing a new anode in it. It took about an hour or two.

Well, I was a bit skeptical at first, but It has been three weeks now, and the water heater is as quiet as a tomb. We’re getting more hot water out of it, and the whole charge was $250. And $75 in five years to replace the anode again. We are very happy consumers indeed. I’ve been asking folks at work if they have noisy water heaters (and there are a few; we have hard water around here), and recommending him.

Does anyone else have good customer service stories to share?

The only ones I have are from my Saturn dealer and they’re too numerous to relate. Everything from squeezing me in with no notice or appointment when something happened to my car and I had travel plans the next day (not once but twice they did this), asking if I had the coupon for service they had mailed out just a week before and when hearing that I had foolishly left it at home they took one out of their pocket and gave it to me to use anyway (saved me almost $100 on new tires!), to replacing something that broke a month after the warrenty had expired and making it free anyway.

… All that… Plus comparing their prices, I pay the same cheap rate as I would for no-name brand parts but get name brand GM parts with a labor rate equal to the lowest chop shop in my area.

Yeah, I may sound like a commercial for them… But I love my Saturn and I’ve never heard of anyone getting better service anywhere else.

Trying to think of any stories from anywhere else… nope, none.