Customer Service Success Stories

Everyone hears tales about how their friend “hates Verizon” or their neighbor “will never buy another Panasonic TV as long as they live!” These common issues with product manufacturers, retailers, and utility providers take up a large degree of daily conversation. Horror stories about hated companies have even developed into websites specifically geared towards anti-company barragements. (Google’s heard of them…ask him.)

But, I’m here to tell you about a few companies that I’ve recently dealt with that have not only offered what I’ve asked for, but superceded it greatly.

We start the story with my three-month stint at Best Buy. I worked in the computer department and one of our lifebloods was printer ink. The reason was, of course, that the profit margin on these was very high. We were also told that a great line to use in order to sell more ink was, “All retail stores were closed at 11pm on a Sunday when Sally’s 10-page report is due at 8am the next morning and you intelligently used the last drop of ink for printing the new baby’s latest feeding adventure.” Thus, we advised our customers to always have an extra ink cartridge lying around for that proverbial “rainy day”. So, our family took this advice and when it came time to use that backup cartridge, the cartridge had dried out. Being that it was months since it was purchased and we no longer had the receipt, there wasn’t much to do except contact Epson (the manufacturer of our printer). I found their e-mail address (probably techsupport@epson.com or the more feel-good customerservice@epson.com) and expected a canned answer of “Thank you for contacting Epson, the best company in the world to screw you out of your hard earned cash by charging you $50 for broken cartridges.” Oh, and I figured I would get it a month later.

But no. I actually received a human response. And it didn’t take a month or even a week. I got a response in less than 24 hours. Granted, their answer was something like “Why didn’t you save the receipt, moron?” I replied and further explained my situation by reiterating Best Buy’s policy (which I’m sure Epson helped them create). I got another response within a day from the prior rep’s manager saying that she understood and that if I sent back the cartridge and the box, they’d take a look (i.e. make sure I wasn’t lying) and send me back a new one. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Score one for Epson!

The next tale begins with a flash memory card from SanDisk. This 128Mb card was used in an MP3 player until the player died (note to readers: Rio 500s are nice but don’t last long). I bought a new one (iRock 530) and tried to load songs onto the card. No such luck. Tried it with my sister’s Creative Nomad IIc and that didn’t work either. Again, the product was over a year old so I was without a box or a receipt. SanDisk’s website said the cards have a five year warranty so I shot them over an e-mail. Again, I hoped my BS response would come by my next birthday but, no…another company came through! I got a very nice response (I think his name was Scott) which asked some good questions like: Have I tried it in another player? (Yep), Have I made sure my MP3 player actually works with SanDisk cards? (Yes, thanks to Circuit City’s great return policy :) ) and a few others. He responded back (again, within a day) and said they’ll give me an RMA and a prepaid shipping label (excellent!). Also, if they can’t fix my card, they’ll send me out a new one. End result – two weeks later, I had a brand new working card! SanDisk has earned the distinction as my future flash memory provider. (except when PNY has SD cards for $30 less)

Next, we move onto Sony, who makes great products but their sheer size usually envelops any issues that consumers have and spits them (the people) out by the side of the road. Not in this case, though. So, pops was having problems with his Sony Vaio desktop. I suggested we reformat the hard drives and reinstall the operating system using the supplied restore disks. Reformatting goes fine and I insert the first restore CD and reboot the computer. “Incorrect CD inserted. Please insert correct CD for this computer.” Of course, I thought it was a fluke so I tried again. Same message. I then took out the CD and examined the mumbo jumbo of letters and numbers on the CD. I was able to decipher a FXA-36, which googled to a laptop…a laptop?…a laptop! These CDs should be for a desktop!!!

Sony Vaio support gets an e-mail about giving us the wrong restore disks with the computer. The first response I got was another quick one (might have been two days, but that’s still quite good) and the tech referred me to Sony’s website where I could purchase new restore disks. Granted, if I had lost the disks or had bought the machine off a friend without any disks, that answer would have been acceptable. However, Sony put our package together so they are the creators of our current situation. This is the answer I retorted with to the tech and his response understood our predicament. He had us fill out some e-mail forms to make sure they sent us the correct CDs (and to check that we did actually own this computer and weren’t just accumulating restore disks to auction off). We then got a package in the mail a few days later with the correct restore disks. I was so impressed that I’d have bought three Sony plasma TVs and used them as overly thick picture frames…if I actually needed picture frames.

To close my three stories, I’ll say that I, too, have had some hellish customer service stories with online companies, local retailers, and everyone in-between. But even though they may seem like large entities with three figure stock prices, they do have some common sense and can adequately respond to consumer pleas. Just don’t tell them I later sold that flash card on eBay…