Complaint About Disappointing Noodle Bowl Results In Bounty Of Noodles For Customer

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How to turn a bad experience into a good one.

Consumerist reader Scott is a big fan of the noodle bowls made by the folks at Nongshim America. But when he recently went to heat up a bowl, he was let down by the half-full product he encountered. The way the company responded certainly made up for the disappointment.

Scott’s e-mail to the company wasn’t even to whine or ask for a refund. He just nicely suggested that the company might want to look into improving its quality control.

The company wrote back within minutes asking for more details and offering to pick up the unsatisfying noodles so it could figure out where in the process a problem had occurred. But Scott, being hungry and realizing that half a bowl of noodles was still edible, had already eaten them.

“It is not a problem,” the company rep wrote back. “We have an automated scale, which weighs each bowl we manufacture. We just wanted to weigh your bowl again to find the root cause of this claim. Thank you for taking your time to respond to us.”

She then asked for his mailing address so she could send him some samples as a thank you.

“After all of that, I thought it was great service,’ Scott tells Consumerist. “I wasn’t really expecting anything out of it. After she said she’d be sending a few things to me I’d expected maybe a few coupons or whatnot… until yesterday when I got a rather large box from them!

“From one bowl with an issue, I received 6 bowls and 3 packages of ramen. WOW! Thank you Nongshim America. Love the bowls, and love the customer service.”

Obviously, not every company can afford to shower customers with freebies. But as Scott mentioned, it’s sometimes just enough to show that you actually give a damn about the people paying for your product.

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