good-customer-service
(dsb nola)
—>The usefulness of Best Buy's Geek Squad depends entirely on the competence of the employee you get when you go in for help, and unfortunately Scott landed one of the lazier ones. Here's his sales pitch to Scott over a laptop that wouldn't start: "It's going to take at least 10 minutes for me to get the multimeter or another adapter. It's going to be a problem inside the computer, let's just send it in." More »
—>Tony had a lot of problems with the build quality of his new bicycle, so he finally wrote to Trek Bikes and told them all the things going wrong with it. Unlike Comfort Select, which denies manufacturing problems even as it replaces broken units with a less defective version (that you pay for), Trek contacted Tony and treated him like they actually wanted his repeat business. More »
—>A Consumerist reader (actually, several of you) e-mailed us the shipping confirmation message that is sent out by CDBaby, the 'utopian' online music site that promotes independent musicians (yet is partnered with Best Buy). More »
—>"Above and Beyond" service often comes down to the management of a particular location, rather than an individual employee, no matter how big or otherwise problematic a company may be. Fred had such an experience with Venkatesh, the overseas customer service rep he reached when he called to cancel his ancient Citibank account. Venkatesh not only talked him out of canceling the account, but was so competent and nice in the process that Fred felt compelled to speak to his supervisor and write to Consumerist. More »
—>In a post-birth haze, Suzanne accidentally ordered birth announcement cards from Paper Moments listing the wrong birthdate for her two-week old son. The site has a clear policy regarding customer errors: mistakes are worth a 50% discount on reprints, and nothing more. Accepting the policy as immutable, Suzanne called and left a polite message asking Paper Moments to reprint the cards with the right birthdate. The company responded with an unexpected bundle of joy. More »
—>Reader David was eating his dinner of Trader Joe's Chimichurri salmon when he found an unexpected garnish: a rather dead and fully cooked worm. It was brown and roughly an inch long. He e-mailed the company, then brought the fish (and worm) back to the store for a refund. While the store supervisor's handling of the situation was stellar, the reaction from Trader Joe's corporate has been...nonexistent. More »
—>As the economy tanks, we keep seeing examples of companies cutting more corners on customer service, and especially becoming less cooperative when it comes to resolving a problem that involves billing. That's why it's nice to see a business not only respond quickly, but in favor of the customer. (It's probably no surprise to you that it's a small business and not a corporation.) More »
—>Consumerist reader MunkyBoi had a terrible experience at Tahoe Joe's, where he and his fiancee held their wedding dinner. He tried to follow up with the manager of the restaurant, both to explain what went wrong and to commend the one waitress who saved the day, but the manager kept brushing him off. Finally he wrote a letter to corporate, and was surprised to receive a very personal response—along with a $250 gift certificate—a few days later. We'd love to know if that $250 came out of the manager's profits. More »
—>Pani just had an astoundingly good bit of customer service from aptly-named simplehuman—makers of those elegant-but-expensive trash cans—and wrote to let us know about it. Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and every cable, cellular, and telephone company, you might want to print this out and pass it around your CSR executive offices. More »
—>This Mother's Day story is a bit of a mixed-bag—ProFlowers clearly failed to deliver the arrangement they sold to M., but they refunded him the entire amount of his purchase when he contacted them about the issue. It's a "fail" for execution, but a perfect example of how to own up to and correct a wrong for your customer. More »
Timothy, our hapless eBay seller who kept having problems listing his laptop on the auction site, was contacted by a Real Live Human from eBay the day after we posted his story. "Garrison" apologized for the frustration, and said he'd be making a note on Timothy's account to keep it from getting shut down by other agents. He also suggested several listing options that were pretty well-covered by our commenters in the original thread. More »
—>A few weeks ago, Zach emailed us to say that his Rewards Zone Mastercard hasn't worked properly in the five months he's had it, and no one at Best Buy had been able to help. We pointed him to our Guide To Fighting Back, and he responded tonight with an update. More »
After the first or second ring, a REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING answered. I've heard tales of such wondrous, magical, fantastical happenings, but this was happening to ME! Anyway, a very pleasant woman named Michelle helped me with everything and I hung up very happy. It's true. LL Bean rocks.More »
Robin recently had a terrible experience with a broken Roomba and the unhelpful people at iRobot, so she was shocked and amazed by the helpful customer service of KitchenAid. From her email: More »
