After reading dozens of stories about companies doing whatever they can to get out of honoring a customer’s warranty, it’s a relief to find a situation which is the exact opposite of that.

Lindsey had such an experience with Slingbox. A customer service rep went well above and beyond, getting her a replacement for her broken unit even though it was out of warranty and earning loyalty and goodwill along the way.

I’m cranky and my stuff always breaks. I try to stay positive on the phone with customer service reps but usually end up breaking down, so I’m happy to report that I just had a wonderful experience with Sling Media‘s service department.

I bought my Slingbox Pro almost two years ago at Costco. It was the best to be able to watch live TV from my dorm room. In a story for another day, the sound on my Dell stopped working, and I thus stopped using Sling Player to watch TV on my laptop.

Flash forward to today: I decided to install the Sling Player on my new laptop. I quickly realized there was no connectivity between my router and the actual Slingbox. I browsed through message boards online to see that many other people have had problems with this mysterious loss of connectivity. I called their Customer Service department to report that I had no idea when or how my Slingbox broke, and their rep told me he was very sorry that my 90-day warranty had expired long ago. He also told me that I could pay $29.99 for technical service but that I could not extend my warranty so late in the game. I sighed and thanked him, but he asked me to wait two minutes before I hung up.

He returned in less than a minute to tell me the company is very interested in customer satisfaction, and offered me free technical service. After we spent quite some time pretending I hadn’t already performed the typical solutions (plug, unplug, plug, unplug) and that he might be able to help fix a broken piece of equipment, he offered to send a replacement in the mail, completely free of charge, within the next week.

I’ll be getting a new Slingbox soon, and I’m so happy with the company that I just purchased the $29.99 Slingplayer app for my iPhone. And sent you this message.

Kudos, Nameless CSR. Is this typical service for Sling Media, or is this rep about to be either fired or promoted?

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