While Santa and his pointy-eared, non-union laborers toil away at the North Pole, the editors of our more famous sibling publication Consumer Reports have compared their notes on a wide variety of companies’ policies on everything from guarantees to fees to refunds and distilled it down to the best and worst of the lot in their first-ever Naughty & Nice Holiday Shopping List. [More]
zappos
Zappos Turns Office Tour Into Vegas Tourist Attraction
By 7.29.10
A Vegas tourist attraction that doesn’t involve hookers, blackjack, or magic? It’s possible! Famed retailer of shoes and joy Zappos opens its office doors to hundreds of people every month, welcoming everyone, not just business executives and crazed fans. [More]
Why I Sold Zappos
By 6.7.10
INC has an article penned by Zappos CEO and newly-minted-book-author, Tony Hsieh detailing the decision to sell Zappos to Amazon.com after initially turning them down. According to Hsieh, he made the decision in order to preserve an experiment in happiness, not a shoe company. [More]
Zappos Eats $1.6 Million In Pricing Snafu
By 5.24.10
Zappos-owned e-commerce site 6pm.com had a little pricing problem this weekend: A glitch in its system marked down every product in the store to $49.95. By the time the problem was fixed, the store had lost $1.6 million. So, did Zappos cancel the orders or charge the customers the “correct” price for their goods? Nope. The company ate the loss, saying it was “the right thing to do for our customers.” [More]
Zappos Steadfastly Refuses To Stop Delighting People
By 5.6.10
Yes, here is another happy Zappos customer. Reader Sarah’s son’s shoes broke and she asked to exchange them… but they just overnighted new ones instead. [More]
Shoes.com Website Doesn't Want To Ship To Lora
By 12.21.09
Shoes.com doesn’t seem to like Lora. Not the people at Shoes.com, who were helpful enough, but the website itself. Each time Lora places an order, the system cancels it–and naturally, owing to its hatred of this woman, it won’t tell anyone why. Whatever Lora did to hurt Shoes.com’s feelings, it worked.
(Okay, it may have something to do with billing addresses, but nobody is sure.)
Report Says Zappos Was Forced To Sell To Amazon
By 7.23.09
According to the San Francisco Business Times a report by PrivateEquityHub citing “two sources close to the company” claims that Zappos wanted to remain independent, but was forced to sell to Amazon by venture capitalists who had invested in the company.
Everything Retailer Amazon Buys Shoe Retailer Zappos
By 7.22.09
Amazon has purchased Zappos for $807 million. Reaction around Consumerist’s (virtual) newsroom: “Oh, no.” Then we started locking up our shoes in case our right to own them is revoked. No, no, we kid. Maybe.
Zappos Customer Service Is Pleasant And Effective In The Third Person
By 6.5.09
Yes, Zappos has famously good customer service, and should be regarded as the gold standard of awesome. We know this. We just had to share this highly amusing customer service chat transcript. The post’s author (and chatter “Timmy”) wanted to check out the quality and flexibility of Zappos’s chat agents, and started with an odd, but not implausible, scenario.
By 5.27.09
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Tomorrow is Take Your Customer to Work Day. Dreamed up by marketer Sean Hazell, the “event” is meant to get companies to “open up their doors and invite customers into the workplace to meet employees and better understand how their business works.” Sounds like something that could benefit both businesses and consumers, though very few companies seem to have jumped on the bandwagon. The one marquee name: Zappos. So, if you’re in Vegas tomorrow, you can get a tour of the company’s HQ, and a meeting with some CSRs. [Take Your Customer To Work Day]
Get Free Overnight Shipping For Life At Zappos
By 2.4.09
Get guaranteed overnight shipping for life from awesome-opossum online shoe store Zappos simply by signing up here before noon PST today. To use it, remember that you’ll need to shop through the vip.zappos.com portal from now on. (Thanks to Dena!)
Free Shipping Day Is December 18th
By 12.8.08
Check out the 18 and counting online retailers at freeshippingday.com for stores that will give you free shipping and guarantee delivery by Christmas if you shop there on Thursday, December 18th. The retailers include Amazon, Zappos, Dell, Target, Macy’s and other big names, with perhaps more joining before the 18th. Nothing like getting rewarded for waiting until the last minute.
Zappos Continues Awesomeness
By 9.12.08
Zappos online shoe store, famed for its amazing customer service, has done it again.
The Secret Behind Zappos Otherworldly Customer Service? Pay Employees To Quit
By 5.21.08
Say you want to staff your call center with friendly, high energy, intelligent people who want to help customers and who enjoy their job. How do you find them? Well, apparently you hire people, train them, then offer them $1,000 to quit.
Zappos: We Want To Be "Known As A Customer Service Company, Not A Marketing Company"
By 2.20.08
Reader Matt forwarded this email exchange he had with Zappos.com over their recent decision to stop promoting their price guarantee and free overnight shipping.
Zappos Zaps Price Protection Policy, Free Overnight Shipping
By 2.17.08
Update: Zappos will still surprise customers with free overnight shipping, but it is no longer a perk they will actively promote.
Zappos Sends You Flowers
By 10.16.07
We get nice stories about Zappos’ customer service all the time, but this one seems to have touched a lot of our readers.
