Gonzalo went in to buy some replacement earbuds for his iPhone, and recieved some pretty amazing customer service from an anonymous Best Buy employee.

Given the terrible life expectancy of iPhone headphones, I recently went to my local Best Buy to purchased a standard set of replacement headphones.

I look around the cell phone area, had trouble finding them, and asked a customer service rep where they were. He quickly pointed them out and walked back to where he had been milling about. I looked at the packaging, noticed that it was the older iPhone headphones (the ones that don’t have buttons for volume control), and I didn’t see the newer ones anywhere near the old ones. Nor did I see a sticker price indicating where they once were or should be.

I went back to the same customer service rep and told him which ones I needed. “Oh yeah, these are the old school ones. Let’s see what we have,” was his reply. He then walked to a mobile phone display and unlocked the bottom drawer of the display. As he rummaged through boxes, I assumed he was looking for a box of headphones. I was a little confused when he pulled out an iPhone 3GS box, and was further confused when he opened the box and I noted an iphone with a cracked screen inside. He then pulled out the iPhone, grabbed the headphones that had came with it, and gave them to me!

“Free of charge?” I asked. “Yes, no charge,” came his reply.

I guess this makes sense… this phone arrived broken and was being returned… I guess they don’t need to supply the headphones for a full refund from Apple. Why not make a nice gesture to a customer who wants a product that is overpriced and sold out? I was very impressed!

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