I thought it would be nice to have a list of stores and companies with good customer service/tech support, and products that are above average. If you have come across a quality product, or a great company, then please share it here.
I’ll start the poll with an endorsement of Columbia jackets*. They’re very warm, rugged and the top of the line coats have lots of good features (cell phone pockets, side zips and vents to prevent overheating, money pockets on the inside of the coat, to name a few). They also send out free replacement zippers and cloth swatches for repairs.
*These are my opinions and are based on experience. I am not affiliated with Columbia.
Someone recently reverse-pitted (praised) Trader Joes (International food market). I’ll second it.
I’ve seen a lot of praise for Target recently - (Enforcing their no Salvation Army bell policy). Though I don’t support that PC policy, I’d personally like to thank them for picking up the tab for my and my date’s $40 admission to MoMA last Friday night.
I’ll nominate amazon.com for being a good online retailer. FGair service and very competitive pricing.
LL Bean. I finally found a brand of jeans that actually come in my size (42"×34") and they’re loose! Plus the employees at the LL Bean Store near here are very helpful with ordering an item off their website if none are in stock.
I’m going to second Amazon.com. I think I’ve ordered from them about a hundred times over the last few years and I’ve never had a problem. The only funny thing that happened was once I got an extra book in my order. I told them and they gave me a return label to print out and return it. Easy as pie! Love the wishlist for shopping for friends, love that they have so many companies linked to them (you can buy clothes, kitchenstuff, electronics, etc as well as books!) and love their amazon.com visa that lets you earn gift certificates - yeah!
I have to put in a good word (or twenty) for VistaPrint, an online printing company. I’ve only ever bought address labels from them, but I have friends who have gotten their free business cards and thought they were great.
VistaPrint’s huge selection of designs is most notable for its absence of crap. There is no clip-art and no superfluous text, quite a bit of which I have seen on other print sites. The quality of both design and product are top notch. Your order goes from your computer to their printer with no middle-person. Customer service is excellent.
In case you couldn’t tell, I highly recommend them.
Zamberlan boots. I bought a pair about five years ago and hiked in them for about a year and a half before they had to be resoled. After resoling, I got another year and a hlaf out of them. At that point, I bought another pair - they’ll need resoling pretty soon. But the boots themselves are phenomenal.
There’s a sports simulation website called WhatIfSports. It lets you create teams of any players throughout history (Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds in the same outfiedl, for example) and play entire seasons against other users teams. The site admin there is incredibly responsive to requests from his users, and they’ve been constantly improving the site since I started playing there a couple of years ago.
Since my hard drive is in the process of dying a slow and painful death, I have nice things to say about Western Digital. It was under warranty (they have a 3 year warranty for some drives, compared to 1 for most drive manufacturers), and they sent me a new one to get as much data off as I can before I have to return the old one. The new one is also 50Gigs bigger than the old, at no extra cost.
I just posted this in a baby stuff thread this morning, but I was highly impressed that Maya Wrap (a baby sling manufacturer) has detailed instructions on their website for how to sew your own Maya Wrap! It’s listed under “Low cost options” and it’s full instructions, with diagrams, on how to make their $50 product for nothing!
It’s not every company that’s more interested in getting a great thing out there than making money at it!
I posted a thread about this a couple of years ago: My wife and I acquired a [http://www.petmate.com/Catalog.plx?ID=205]PetMate Fresh Flow Fountain (ours is white) a while back. After a few days of adjustment, our cat decided he really liked it, and he’s been much better hydrated ever since.
Here’s the good customer service part: After a year or so, the fountain quit working. I decided it was the pump, so I got on their website and ordered a new one. I wasn’t tremendously happy, but it was only around fifteen bucks, and our cat likes it, so I went ahead, thinking I’d reconsider if it failed again.
Then I got an email from the company, which said, in effect: “Sometimes our pumps clog up. Before we take your money and send you a new pump, here’s instructions on how to take it apart and fix it.”
Did it. Worked. Emailed them back. They cancelled my order.
Nordstrom. Bought a pair of New Balance shoes there about 6 months ago. I’ve only worn them a few times, I should have bought a ½ size bigger as they are a bit tight. Last Sunday I was in a Nordstrom Rack store and mentioned to the sales clerk that the shoes I had on, bought a a regular Nordstrom, were a bit tight. Without question, she asked for the shoes and returned a few minutes later with a pair that was the size I needed but a much more expensive model. She put my insoles in the shoes, put them on my feet and asked how they felt. I told her wonderful and she said great, they were mine without any additional cost. I don’t think I will buy another pair of shoes any place else. I sent a thank email that afternoon and Monday they responded that what happened should be considered the norm and Nordstrom’s, not the exception.
Nalgene. They make water bottles, particularly for outdoor sports people. The bottles are pretty much indestructible; last summer a friend of mine dropped one off a cliff and there wasn’t even a scratch on it. They also come in a variety of cool colors and sizes. Lately other companies have produced cheap ripoffs that look almost exactly identical, so check carefully to make sure you’re getting a real Nalgene.
When I was 18 and a freshman in college, I bought a couple of Nalgene bottles to take on a backpacking trip. I didn’t get the lexan ones - just the HDPE ones, because they were $1 cheaper. After bringing one of the bottles with me just about everywhere I went since then, the first of them finally gave out - the side cracked when the water inside it froze overnight.
Boy, is this going to address a niche market. Not retail consumer related at all, I’ll mention that seismic data processing is an agonizing thing with which to have to deal, and I’m quite happy with my analyst at Spectrum Energy and Information Technology, Inc. (while I do have to prod him a bit, he turns out good stuff, and the price is right).
Staying in that same neck of the woods, I’ll say that Seismic Micro Technology’s Kingdom Suite is the hands down best all round geophysical software package available (although they are bested in some areas, the package is integrated and the company is small enough that they usually respond to my gripes).
Coming back out into the sunlight, I’ll say that I’ve enjoyed a pretty good customer relationship with NTB (née NTW) over the years. I hate to think of how many tires I’ve purchased over the years, but I’m happy with those folks.
