When Consumerist reader and New Jersey resident Brian lost power for nearly a week following Hurricane Sandy, he also thought his plans to craft some homemade coffee ice cream for Thanksgiving had gone kaput too.

Brian had bought coffee syrup from the folks at Dave’s Coffee, and he’d used some to whip up a “test” batch of ice cream right before Sandy came barreling through the area.

His house was without power for six days, so of course that ice cream was now toast. But would the coffee syrup have survived, now that it had been opened?

He e-mailed Dave’s to find out, simply asking if the syrup would still be safe to consume after a week in a warm refrigerator.

To Brian’s surprise, Dave’s didn’t just write back with advice on whether to keep or trash the syrup:

Hi Brian,

I’m so sorry to hear about that! What a terrible waste of awesome ice cream.

It’s most likely fine, but just to be on the safe side toss it and we will just send you another bottle.

Once Brian’s order was located — he’d ordered through Fab.com originally — he had some brand new coffee syrup a few days later and was able to save Thanksgiving with his coffee ice cream.

As you probably know, while it’s really easy to get unsatisfied customers to vent their anger, it can be incredibly difficult to get happy customers to sing your praises. But it’s small things like this — replacing an order when the customer didn’t even ask for a freebie — that can earn a growing company a devoted customer base.

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