Some of the stories of good customer service that we post are simply tales of good customer service executed by competent employees. These deserve praise, but don’t compare to true “Above and Beyond” consumer experiences. That’s what Jeremy’s family experienced from J. Crew after a terrible fate befell their daughter’s new dress (not pictured.) They called the store to see whether the dress was in stock so they could buy a replacement. Instead, J. Crew stunned the family by exchanging the damaged dress for a new one at no charge.

My wife recently visited a J. Crew store at [redacted] Mall in [redacted], NC and purchased a $40 dress for my 6 year old daughter. My daughter loved the dress, my wife loved the dress, everyone was happy! The next day, my daughter wears it to Kindergarten (she is very good at keeping her clothes clean and she often wears nicer outfits to school). We had no worries about it. That is, until she came home and had a large black stain on the front of the dress. The culprit: permanent marker from a fellow student.

My wife was devastated at the damage caused to such a nice dress, and I was just as devastated over the loss of $40. She attempted to scrub the marker out to no avail. By this time, we had already thrown away the receipt and thought we had no options but to purchase the same dress again, that’s how much my wife loved it. Since the mall is a good 30 minutes from us, she called J. Crew to make sure they had the dress in stock. During the conversation with the woman on the phone, my wife explained what had happened with the marker and why she was visiting the store again. Much to our surprise, they offered to exchange the dress completely free of charge, no receipt required. They even offered to ship us the dress if her size was no longer available in stock.

My wife visited the store, she found the dress in my daughter’s size, and the employee was incredibly helpful and kind throughout the whole situation. I couldn’t be more happy at saving an additional $40, and my wife couldn’t be happier with having our daughter’s favorite dress back. I thought this was such an extraordinary example of a store going above and beyond to make the customer happy. And happy we are!

Excellent work, J. Crew. And let this be an important public service announcement: keep permanent markers out of the hands of kindergarteners.

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