Score! Customer service success!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Have any recent successes in customer service you’d like to share?

I just had one, which is especially pleasant since it didn’t look so good from the start.

Minor problem concerning my eyeglasses - the rubber tip that goes over the ear cracked, such that the rubber part slips on and off the leg. I could glue it or something, or just get new sunglasses, but they are Ray-bans, I like them, and they weren’t cheap.

So I go to the Ray-ban website. Talk about the least informative website I’ve ever encountered! All kinds of “cool” videos and pictures, but not a hint of an address or phone number to send in a question.

So I went to the Sunglass Hut site, where I’d bought them (I think). They allowed customer service e-mails, but my 1st attempt was halted because it was over 250 characters. After I edited it down, there was a problem with registration or somesuch.

At that point I noticed the toll-free number, which I called and, of course, was put on hold. But a relatively short time later a person came on, told me I needed to call Ray-ban, and gave me their number.

I called the number, and they answered giving a different name - Luxotica. The phone system was not very easy to use, and this time the wait was longer. When a rep came on he quickly said I could order new temples or send in my glasses. When I clarified what was wrong he said, “Oh, you mean the temple tips?” When we established that that is indeed what I was talking about, he said, “Let me check.” Maybe 10 seconds later he said, “We have them, and can send them to you at no charge. You will get them within 8 business days.”

SCORE!

(Doesn’t take too much to make me happy!)

2

A couple of weeks ago, Comcast snipped my cable and internet line in an effort to catch a possible illegal user. Of course I was furious, and called the CS number with a pretty bad attitude (this was the second time this has happened. I live in an apartment complex and I imagine some people do steal services, but I’m a good customer).

The rep was pleasant and apologized and followed up with a call after my service was restored and issued a credit to my account. Score!

3

My husband had a similar problem with his Ray-Bans, and he had put a bad scratch in one of the lenses, in a place that interfered with his line of sight. When we had bought them (IIRC, it was Sunglass Hut) the manager told us of an almost unknown-to-the-public company policy: You can purchase a new pair of the same glasses at half price for up to a year following the original purchase if you damage your glasses! They were able to look up our receipt in their system, and hubby had new Ray-Bans for about $70.00! This was about a year ago, so something may have changed, but that’s a pretty amazing policy for the store to have!

4

Anyone else sensing a Pit thread that’ll be opening in, oh say, nine business days?

5

Man, you HAD to piss on my happy dance here.
Look - if I’m not successful in getting this accomplished, then I’ve got NOTHING to show for this entire day at work!

6

A few weeks ago, I sent in a mail in rebate for Bauch and Lomb contacts. I know what sticklers companies can be about following the directions exactly for these kind of things, so I read everything over and sent it all in (I thought.) I got an e-mail a few days later saying they had received my rebate and were processing it. (nice to know!) Then after about a week, I got a letter in the mail saying “You forgot to send in this other XYZ paperwork, so if you can just send it in we will process your rebate.” I was very pleasantly suprised that they bothered to contact me and give me another chance to send in what they wanted. Usually companies will use any excuse not to send your rebate, even if you do everything correctly!

7

I had to go to my optometrist for my bi-annual eye/glasses checkup. I was quite surprised to find that my prescription for my eyeglasses had not changed. So I talked to the rep at the counter about the possibility of getting some “Rec-Specs” to wear during my Karate classes, all the while anticipating a hefty price-tag.

Long story short: She was able to get me a $250 pair of Rec-Specs for $27.00 because of an in-store discount combined with what my insurance would cover.

Score!

8

I went to Wendy’s for lunch today and got exactly what I ordered. No errors. SCORE!

StG

9

<small hijack>- they need to cut the line to do this :confused: <end small hijack>

10

Now now, you’re looking at this all wrong. What you have here, in addition to your terrific CS experience, is days of the anticipation of posting when the pieces arrive and letting out a heartfelt “In your face, Otto!”

11

Sure. Don’t get me started on the time Mens Warehouse suspected someone of shoplifting a suit, so they fire-bombed a whole city block.

12

I mentioned recently that I’d fucked up my 10-year-old Leatherman Wave. I fully expected, and offered, to pay, as I’d done all the damage myself. But they told me they’d repair it under warranty.

This week, I picked up a small parcel in my mailbox from Leatherman.

When I opened the parcel there was a note saying: “We regret that this model is no longer in production. Please accept a new model Leatherman Wave.”

So I have a brand new Leatherman Wave, in a brand-new leather holster. Retailing over here for up £100 (in US money, that is about $17,546. Well ok, about $200. I originally paid $70). They paid the postage too.

Holy shit. Now that is customer service.

13

LL Bean. Their return policy of “any time, for whatever reason, in whatever condition” is true. Our dog chewed on the strap of my son’s backpack and they replaced the backpack, no charge.

I will gladly plonk down $60-80 for a backpack…those crappy $20 ones you get at Target don’t last a month. My kids’ backpacks have lasted several years now, with no problem.
SCORE!

14

Luxottica is the parent of Ray-Ban (and Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, among about a dozen other eyewear vendors), just FYI.

15

Heck, if I were selling a product with a markup of approximately 1000%, I’d institute this policy too.

16

I completely agree that Leatherman has some pretty awesome customer service, and the Wave is an awesome product.

However, I can buy a brand new wave for $80, shipped. (What’s that, about £8.73?) There was a thread awhile back about conversion rates compared to how much things cost. I still don’t really understand it. [/hijack]

17

I had an excellent experience with Corsair a few months ago.

I had purchased 2 Corsair Flash Voyager USB keys, a 1Gb and a 2Gb. The larger one worked fine, but the smaller always seemed a little slow to me, especially when i was trying to run portable applications from it.

Finally, i sat down and did a speed test on both, using a 500Mb file. While the 2Gb device had read and write speeds that were pretty much exactly what the Corsair specs predicted, the 1Gb device was slower than a wet weekend, taking more than twice as long on the read portion of the test, and 7-8 times as long on the write portion. A Sandisk key, tested for comparison, was just a bit slower than the good Corsair.

I joined the Corsair support forums and posted my problem. An hour later, a Corsair rep posted to my thread, telling me that he was authorizing an RMA for my slow device. The RMA was quick and painless, and resulted in me receiving a new, working USB key.

Excellent service all around. The following week, i was shopping for additional RAM for my desktop, and bought Corsair without hesitation.

18

Disregarding the exchange rate, before we get to buy a Leatherman we’ve got shipping costs, import excise rates, distributor markup, high corporation tax, Value Added Tax (VAT) of 17.5%, vendor markup, and we have to cope with what the UK market will bear, given that we’re used to paying high prices for stuff - £1 is worth about $1 in actual local spending terms. Also, the goods were probably imported when the exchange rate was less favourable, so the price reflects that. And in the case of specialty imported goods, something of a lack of competition. Sucks, but there you go.

Anyway, I got mine free so who cares? :wink:

19

Not physically but I’ve seen similar things done to locate problems in the phone or net service. You close down chunks of it to narrow down where the problem is. The way some providers assign DNS numbers, it may be faster than tracking down which user had which number on which day (which I think would be the other option in this case).

Heck, it’s not so different from those bank policies where your credit card is closed down without your request if they get a very large expense, or an expense from a strange place; in this case Comcast was getting more traffic than they thought was logical for that line. The fellows at my usual bank office know about my travels, among other things, because they’ve had to explain to central several times that getting a bill from, say, Costa Rica doesn’t mean my card has been stolen, it means I’m in Costa Rica. They call my mother (her phone is listed as secondary contact and they know her, this being a small town) to confirm before informing Central that the charge seems legit. That’s good service too, as having my cards cancelled when I’m abroad would suck big time!

20

About three years ago, I bought a SimpleHuman dish drainer at Costco; I thought I must be nuts to spend $30.00 on a dish drainer, but, well, I really liked the way it looked, and hubby had just landed a new job that paid about 4X his previous one, and I was feelin’ wild. . .but I love that dish drainer!

So, about six months ago, the plastic brackets that hold the stainless steel glass-holders on, started showing cracks. Most of the drainer is stainless, but some key parts are a sturdy plastic. So I hopped on their website, and shot them off an email asking if I could order some of these new brackets. I got an email back saying they were very sorry I was having a problem, and would ship me out replacement parts, free of charge, immediately. A week later, I had not two, but three replacement glass holders for my dish drainer!

Score!