What has happened recently where you were absolutely stunned with great service?
Here’s mine:
There has been a streetlight out on my corner for a couple of years. The other night I noticed it was darker out than normal, and I saw that another light was out across the street.
I had a vague memory of hearing the robovoice lady saying “blah blah blah…To report streetlights out…blah blah” one time when I called our utility for something else. I searched for “PSE&G streetlight out” and found that I could create an account and report the streetlight online.
I clicked “Submit” last night at 10pm or so. I expected the report to disappear for several months until it worked its way to the top of a long pile of other work.
This morning at 11:30 a bucket truck pulled up and I watched in amazement as the fellow repaired both streetlights. Sweet!
I had read that one way to fight a speeding ticket here in California was to contact the office of the City Engineer, and ask for the survey information for the road where the ticket was issued. Apparently if it hasn’t been surveyed for proper speed within five years, you can use it to get out of the ticket.
Thinking “Oh my God, it’s a Government City Office so they will probably want some astonomical fee for the survey and tell me it will take 6-8 weeks to get because they are overburdened/understaffed, and that’s assuming they aren’t dicks like the people at the DMV.”, I made the call.
I got a very pleasant woman who was incredibly helpful at looking up the information and sent the report to me for free, and I received it one day later! As it turns out, they hate the cops as much as the rest of us and look forward to providing these reports to people in San Diego.
Not to go into as much detail as I have in other threads (:p), we’ve fallen on hard times. First we had a gas leak. I asked the company we called to repair it first if we could make payments. Since they don’t do that, it took a couple hours of this one asking that one before they said Yes and came out and fixed the leak. (The gas company had already shut off the gas.) A couple months later the kitchen sink stopped up majorly and we couldn’t clear it out even with a snake. Called same company and asked if they could repair that and add it to the bill. Then, the thermostat went kaput on the water heater. Yep, same thing.
We’re going to be paying them for a long time. I asked my son what we could do to thank them for being so nice. He said “Pay off the bill.” Since we can’t do that I sent their next check in a Thank You card.
But I’m not going to call on them again! They’re going to tell us they didn’t take us to raise.
The local Toyota dealership’s service department. Yes, you heard right: a dealership service department was helpful, prompt, efficient and friendly. My car is still under warranty and was having intermittent problems with the JBL sound system display not functioning properly: showing hieroglyphics instead of data, blanking out, buttons not doing what they should.
I took it out the first time and of course it wouldn’t cooperate, so they said bring it back when it’s having the problems. Well, of course that will never work out, so I video’d the problem instead. Made an appointment, and they got me in on time (!), showed him the video; he showed it to the technician, who diagnosed it as “hosed”; ordered a new one from CA, and a week later it was installed in under an hour. Free.
I was all prepared to do battle with management over this, but it was all handled at the desk level with zero problems. My only complaint is that they didn’t save my station presets.
Just yesterday. Took my car to a full-service car wash and auto detailing shop, to ask how much it would cost to get an old bumper sticker removed. The guy looked it over, scraped it off with a razor blade, and let me go without charging me anything.
(I’d been scrubbing at the damn thing for hours! Tried WD-40, Windex, and Ka-Boom. Never thought of using the proper tool!)
I had an outstanding bill from a hospital stay that I thought was my insurance company’s responsibility. The hospital’s billing department called me, I explained and she offered to get on a conference call with my insurance company to straighten things out. She set up the conference call, stayed on hold with me forever and when we did get through was able to navigate the ‘insurance speak’. It turns out I did owe the money but because she walked me through the steps to make sure it went a bit easier.
Ordered a CPAP online. A few weeks later there was a sale on the same machine. I wrote and asked if they could issue a credit. THEY DID. Ask and ye shall receive.
Recently I was out of town on vacation and after a long and adventurous day, stopped at a Flagship Whole Foods at around 9 pm for dinner stuff. They close at 10. We bought all kinds of awesome stuff and headed back to the hotel to snarf it all up.
As soon as I got in the room, I realized I had not received my cash back. I went to call them and found I had already lost my receipt and could not find my cell phone. I borrowed someone else’s phone and called them right away- it was almost 10 pm now and closing time, and I was leaving pretty early in the morning.
They asked me to describe the cashier and what booth I had attended when I paid, and told me to come to customer service in the morning for the cash.
By the time I got there early the next morning, I had found all my lost stuff. When I got to the customer service booth, they were expecting me, greeted me by name, knew the name of the cashier, had already checked his till, and had my money ready and waiting for me.
I was really impressed.
As much stuff as I lost that evening, I felt like they could have told me “Well, you don’t have a receipt and we don’t know what cashier you went to… so sorry.”
I needed and got excellent service from three separate governments once.
At the time my residence in Thailand required that I fly to Singapore once every 14 months to get a new visa. The visa itself required more than 24 hours to get. I had the procedure down pat: Fly to Singapore Sunday night, report to Thai consulate Monday morning and submit passport and application, spend Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning shopping, pick up my passport Tuesday afternoon, go to airport. Total errand: slightly more than 48 hours.
One such Monday morning the Thai official told me what I should have noticed by myself: My U.S. passport was on the verge of expiration. She returned my passport and application unprocessed. Now I needed
[ul]
[li] To get a new U.S. passport. In those days that required only 24 hours.[/li][li] Have my Singapore entry stamp transferred from old passport to new passport. This silly-seeming step was needed for Thailand to give me a visa in Singapore.[/li][li] Do the normal Thai visa procedure.[/li][/ul]
It was Monday. I could pick up a new passport Tuesday if I raced to the U.S. consulate immediately. The errand at Singapore Immigration would also be a day: submit Tuesday, pick up Wednesday. (“Now serving 3428.” – Singapore Immigration is the only place I’ve seen that needed 4-digit numbers for its queues.) If I could then make it to Thai consulate by Wednesday morning, I’d get visa Thursday afternoon, for a loss of only two days. That seemed to be quite iffy though, so I didn’t even call the airline yet to reschedule.
Guess when I finally got on an airplane for Bangkok, new passport and visa in hand?
Tuesday afternoon, per original schedule. I accomplished this only with smiles – no “expedition fees” or anything like that.
That reminds me..I’ve had two somewhat surprising results from the US government.
About 15 years ago I switched jobs, and ended up overcontributing to my 401k. I wasn’t sure how to handle it, so I called the IRS help line. I spoke to a friendly person, who quickly admitted he didn’t know the right answer off the top of his head. He took my number, and called me back about an hour later with specific instructions. All very polite and painless.
The last time I renewed my passport, they spelled my first name wrong. Think “Jon” instead of “John.” I noticed this while getting ready to go to China. I figured that trip would be ok, because my visa just had my first initial, so everything was consistent.
When I got back, I had to schedule a trip up to Canada. I wanted to get the passport fixed quickly, so I did the max expedite service - I paid for two FedEx shipments (packed the return envelope into the original package), and included a check for expedited processing.
A few days later, right on schedule, I got the new passport, and the check was returned. There was a note explaining it was their error, and there was no fee for expedited processing.
Yeah, it was the right thing for them to do. But I was still happily surprised.
A few years back I had a kitchen faucet issue (couldn’t get it apart to install a replacement washer). I brought it to a local hardware store for advice.
The guy behind the counter took the piece and worked on it awhile, then another guy came over to help, then another. Three guys worked on that thing for a half hour before they succeeded.
Then they rang up my washer. “That’ll be 17 cents.”
mmm
I e-mailed someone from payroll. I got tense just doing it. I get tense when I have to make calls like this, having recently had terrible experiences calling the IRS, DMV and Sears Home Services. I got stomach clenching, even though I knew this was an e-mail so I could not be put on hold eternally, could not be spoken to rudely…I just told the person that I did not think I was paid correctly. I was sure that I was underpaid. Then I sent about 3-4 more e-mails with a lot of questions that just made me appear to be a moron. I am not a numbers person. Our e-payslips are confusing and I work for a school system and those of us who work summer programs get paid totally differently in the summer, there were also other factors. This woman from payroll, responded to me, on a day when the board of ed. was not even open due to weekly furloughs. It would have been a prompt response any day, but on a furlough day, wow. Her response was not terse. I fully expected it would be. She was really nice. I then had more communications with my next pay period. She was again, beyond quick and beyond helpful and nice. I know this person has a hard job, and works for a huge school system. It is sad that I fully expected to have a lot of trouble and to have my head bit off. I was wrong. I got the best customer service. Thanks to Andrea B of payroll.
When my mom chose to move into a retirement home a couple years ago, she gave the house to me via the L.A. County Assessor’s office. We didn’t understand some of the legalese on the forms, so I emailed the office and got a reply very fast from a real person, who wrote “Dear Viva, here is what it means and this is what you and your mom need to do. Please let me know if you need any more help.” (paraphrased)
They made it so easy, and it only cost $17.00.
I ordered a new range from Home Depot. They were quick to deliver it and did not damage anything. Nice guys too.
The guys from Verizon FIOS cable were equally nice and had everything set up in 20 minutes and working fine. ( I would have done it myself except that I could not get up into the crawlspace to find the antenna.) FYI, if you get FIOS, you get to talk to people in the US for help, not in India.
One of my friends called DirecTV and asked for a discount–and they gave her one. Just like that.
I once knocked a half gallon of milk off the shelf, accidentally, at Trader Joe’s and it spilled, so I offered to pay for it. They said no, don’t bother, not a problem, and they cleaned it up.
I called the US PostMaster General’s office to tell them about the problems our whole tract has had with misdeliveries, non-deliveries, and mail being left in the street. Man, they got after our local post office fast. It is a free call and you will get a live body.
I emailed Lowe’s headquarters and told them that ours, right behind a residential street, was violating noise ordinances by working after 11pm and before 7am. They got on the manager right away since the mgr. had not been doing anything even after I had called them before. Now it’s much quieter.
My local mechanic. A couple of years ago, one of the pipes on my '99 Saturn got a hole in it. I took it to him to fix. He said that, due to the age and model of the car, you couldn’t just replace the pipe; you had to replace the entire exhaust system (including the catalytic converter) for well over $1000. Then he suggested a place where they would cut out the bad pipe and weld in a new one for $100.
Didn’t charge me for the analysis, either. I’ve been going there ever since.
Something similar happened when I hit a deer. I went to another local body shop and he took the Insurance company’s estimate and said, “I can’t fix it for that. I’ll work it out.” He fixed the fender and it only cost me the deductible.
Quite a few years ago now, my office sent me to a conference, which they did from time to time. On this particular occasion, however, one of the bigwigs canceled, and I wound up with his room at the Four Seasons. Physically, the hotel wasn’t much different than other business-class hotels I have been put up in before and since. The rooms were good, the facilities OK, etc.
BUT, the level of service was significantly different! Three examples:
(1) I scratched my calf on a protruding nail head in the sauna. I mentioned it to the attendant before going into the pool. They had someone there fixing it before I got out of the pool.
(2) I went out rollerblading one afternoon. When I was finished, I skated up to the front door, sweaty and looking like a punk kid (which I was, at the time). The doorman looked me over, opened a small door next to his station, and tossed me a towel and a bottle of Evian.
(3) Finally, in each room was a small leather cover, containing the local paper’s TV listing booklet (Kids, once upon a time, we didn’t have the Internet, and the Sunday newspaper would include a small booklet with the week’s TV listings). Each day, the elastic holding the booklet in the cover would be moved to the current day.
The third item is the smallest example, but it shows the attention to detail that separates a good hotel from a top-end one.
Reminds me of a repair I needed on my old fridge. It kept cycling on and off but not actually running..and not keeping things cold. The repair tech came out, spent a few minutes on it, replaced a relay, and had it working.
He then showed me the “official” way he was supposed to bill it - half an hour min, at whatever the going rate was. Instead, he just sold me the part of a few bucks.
I had a slow leak in my tire, apparently a nail or something in it. My husband drove my car to work and I drove his, and at lunch he took it to the tire store. They took off the tire, found the nail, patched the hole, and replaced the tire. They refused payment.
You know the MCGriddle? Egg and sausage between two pancake pieces? I thought it would be even more divinely perfect form of death-on-a-plate if it was made with the canadian bacon from the McMuffin. I asked a couple times, “can I have the McGriddle with canadian bacon?” and they would look at me funny and say “no, the McGriddle comes with sausage.” Curses!
Until the one magical day, in rural virginia, on my way to a horse show, I asked, “can I have a McGriddle with canadian bacon” and the 16 year old girl said, “no, but what you want is a McMuffin on McGriddle bread.” I do? I DO!
Using her magical McDonalds-to-English decoding system, I am now able to get a McGriddle With Canadian Bacon anywhere, by asking for a “McMuffin on McGriddle bread.”
I’ve written about this before, but here goes. About two years ago, I ordered a pair of shoes, size 14 (I have big feet and they seem to spread as I get older) from Zappos. I paid for them and for delivery in Canada and, in due course, they arrived. The box said size 14, but the size label on the tongue said 13 and they were indeed 13. Get on the phone, expecting voice mail hell. Not in the least. I immediately got a human voice, a very friendly, and very apologetic woman who emailed me a prepaid mailing label and also a voucher for a $10 discount on my next Zappos order. They didn’t have a 14 in stock, so I got a CC refund. She emailed me again to tell me that their records showed that that box was not a return and had come that way from the manufacturer. And a couple months later she emailed me again to say they were in stock and I ordered a pair and got my $10 discount. You can bet I am a loyal Zappos customer from here on.
Since we can’t do that I sent their next check in a Thank You card.