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If you’re looking for good customer service DO NOT patronize JC Penney! I’m so pissed at their poor service, poor attitude and poor customer retention policies. But I also imagine it could just be the bitch with Manager after her name. Up the corporate ladder we must tread!
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A friend of mine in Hong Kong couldn’t find the lip balm Carmex anywhere, so she faxed the company asking where she could buy it.
She got a reply the next day from the CEO in Wisconsin apologising for not having any agents in Hong Kong, and asking for her address so he could mail her a box for free.
I bought a mid-line Mizuno baseball glove for my son at a chain sporting goods store. He was about 10 at the time. About 2 months later I noticed that the leather was tearing in the palm of the glove. After grilling my son about glove care, and he convincing me that it was not his fault, I emailed Mizuno about the problem. After about 2 weeks with no response I looked up the corporate customer service number and called. The gentleman who took my call recognized my problem and apologized for not yet returning my email. He conceded that the glove was not meant for heavy use (though not labeled as such) and said we could send the glove to him for replacement or, since the US Headquarters is only about 20 miles from my house I could bring it in and he’d take care of it personally.
I opted for the personal touch. I loaded my son and the glove into the car and drove over to Mizuno’s headquarters. There the receptionist, upon hearing our name, made us comfortable while she went to get the CSR. He gave us a tour of the factory, let my son examine a new catcher’s mitt made for Javy Lopez, and then lead us into a room with baseball gloves hanging on all 4 walls. He said to my son “This is every glove we make, pick one”. I offered to pay any difference in price but he said “No, we want Mizuno to be your first choice, always”. My son ended up with a glove that retailed for about 4 times what we originally paid - and he still uses it today. And Mizuno is my first choice for sporting equipment, always.
I wanted to replace my Jane brand concealer a couple of months ago, but when I went to the drugstore where I had purchased it in the past, I found they had stopped carrying Jane cosmetics. I checked a few other places, and when I was unable to find the brand, I called the company’s 800 number. A real live person answered the phone, and she was a very pleasant one too. We had a nice conversation, and a week later she sent me a list of all the stores in the area that still carried their products, plus a couple of free concealers. The concealer was all I had really wanted, but I went by a store and bought some of their other stuff too.
Another for LL Bean. My brother returned a 20 year old runner’s rain suit because the elastic degraded. Full refund.
At 20-year-old prices?
I’ll second this. Most people have never heard of Planar (they sell mainly medical imaging systems, their consumer LCDs are a side business), but they’re always my first recommendation for monitors. They used to (probably still do) have a zero-dead-pixel policy while everyone else in the world was telling me that small numbers of them are “normal,” standard 3-year warranty, and they’ve twice replaced monitors for me in that third year.
Plus the monitors just look nice, which is why I bought in the first place.
Yes it will! I’m still using the bookbag I got when I started high school. It has a small tear in one of the seams, but it’s holding up fine. I took it by L.L. Bean’s customer service department on my last trip to Maine; they confirmed that I could get a free replacement for it. (I haven’t replaced it yet…I’m very fond of this bookbag.)
When one of the utility shelves on my Holland Grill cracked after less than a year of use, the company sent me two replacement shelves for free.
Back in high school I purchased a Visoneer PaperPort scanner. One day, it just stopped working. I called their customer service number; within a few days, I had a brand-new replacement scanner (free of charge).
I own two Elna sewing machines…very old, low-tech machines, not the fancy new computer ones. When my second machine was about seven years old, I was having a marathon, last minute Halloween costume sewing session, making four Mickey/Minnie mouse costumes for a friend. Sewing away at top speed late into the night, my machine caught fire…just a minor burst of tiny flame and then smoke, but it was scary! Probably caused by a build-up of lint from the black fake fur I’d been working on. I shipped the machine back to Elna, expecting to have to pay big bucks for even the most minor repairs…generally just to have a technician look at your sewing machine and do a minor cleaning and adjustment costs about $90…that’s why my serger hasn’t been fixed yet! But Elna fixed it, cleaned it and even replaced some broken parts that I didn’t care about, and all I paid was the $9 it cost me to ship it to them (in the original box, might I add…taped to within an inch of its life, but they said to keep the box…!) They said it was an electrical problem, and since that was covered by a lifetime guarantee, repairs were free.
Oh, I finished the costumes on my older, clunkier Elna…the one that was worth more in trade-in value than what we’d paid for it originally. I’m glad I never got rid of it, because you never know when you are going to need a back-up sewing machine in the middle of the night!
I had just subscribed to Mother Earth Magazine, when my first issue arrived with only the subscription protective cover part . The rest of the magazine was lost by the post office.
The post office was very sorry about it but could do nothing. Not that I am going to waste breath with a huge Governmental agency over a $5 magazine.
I emailed Mother Earth yesterday and explained my predicament and kindly asked if they could resend the current issue out to me.
I received an email within 20 minutes.
YAY!