Spin off on the Amazon/UPS/FedEx threads… Where do you find great customer service? Where do you find it unacceptable?
I’ll start. Amazon has always been great (and I will ask for credit if my same or next day order is delayed). As for another, I bought an expensive face serum from Kopari Beauty and had trouble with the dropper. Asked for a new dropper and am getting a replacement bottle instead. (FYI, Coconut Sheer Oil. That stuff’s magic.) DD had problems with a Hoover Steam Mop, receipt long lost, but sent them the label with the MFG code and they shipped a new unit to her.
As for the bad, Verizon is sitting on my last nerve. Added my recently widowed mom to our plan. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Many calls and online chats with CS always ended with them saying it’s all good, then find it MORE screwed up. (They actually activated my mom’s new phone on my 94 year old MIL’s phone. She needed someone to come help her through the steps to reactivate her old flip phone.) Estimated billing is way off. Was told to wait for the real bill. Of course it will be wrong. Any suggestions on the best way to escalate?
I was on a chat with Comcast today. Eight times I asked if there was a way to reduce my internet bill and specified that I didn’t want a bundled deal. Eight times they tried to upsell me a bundled deal. But I knew there was a better internet deal because I had called previously. Finally I asked for that deal, and the guy had to go “look for it”. Yeah, right.
Going into Macy’s and finding someone to helpful is quite a task. Dealing with a sales person makes my blood boil.
If you are lucky to find one they direct you to another station where you can clearly see that there is nobody. If I have to shop there I shop online and pick up from the store. Finding someone to help me with a return is a hassle.
Lord & Taylor on the other hand I find to have very good customer service. They always try their best to help you and take care of you quickly.
I have internet (and phone and TV) service with a locally owned company. I was having problems with my service going out this fall. The second and third times it happened, I requested a service call but then the service returned on its own so I cancelled. The fourth time, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I called the service number. The person I talked to said, “I see you’ve made other appointments. This time, even if the service comes back on its own, don’t cancel the all. We need to figure out why this is happening.” I agreed. He then said that they can’t guarantee when a technician will appear for after-hours calls. I said that I understood. Within half an hour, at approximately 5 p.m. that Saturday, the truck pulled into my driveway. It took the technician less than 5 minutes to find the problem: a loose screw in an exterior locked box. I love this company!
This season I’ve had good luck with Target. Good prices and nice service.
This year, we’ve had very good luck with Fitbit. My daughter is on her third one, and since the Charge is no longer made, they replaced her second Charge with a new model. Both times they’ve just sent a new one, no need to return the broken one (which were just the bands, not the actual fitbit).
On my never again list? Century Link for cable and internet. Awful. It goes out all the time and they don’t know when it will be back, don’t know what to do to help, just keep saying “I’m sorry”
I was at Chipotle a few weeks ago, and they were running low on one of their meats (pork?) and wanted to replenish the pan. They explained to me it would take a few minutes, and since it meant getting fresher meat, I didn’t really care as I wasn’t in a hurry. When it was time to check out, they asked me if I’d like some guacamole and chips to go with it, on the house for the wait and inconvenience. I told them no thanks, because I really didn’t want any extra guac (watching calories and it was already on my salad bowl), so then they told me since I chose not to take the extra guac, they were comping my meal. So it was free… for basically having to wait 3-4 minutes for some fresh meat to come out.
St.John boutique has outstanding service. Since I take my puppy on walks in front of the store…they wave hi. When I come in to shop they have a bible on all customers…they know what I might want. While I find the food at Flemings fairly mundane their service is excellent. LandsEnd is great. Their people know their stuff AND when asked will describe what they see that the camera misses. I haven’t had to return anything.
Not a major retailer, but I had a problem last week when I was overbilled for an item purchased online, which I learned about when the auto-payment went through and I got a notice from my credit card company. I was ticked off and went to the web site and called their customer service number- - at around midnight. Surprisingly the phone was answered almost instantly by a very friendly and cheerful young woman. She was extremely nice and helpful, and confirmed right away that the bill was mistaken, and said that she would put it through to their billing department for a partial refund to my credit card that would be processed the next morning.
The thing that made me smile was that I asked for a confirming email, which she was happy to provide – and when I received that email, it was signed with the person’s full name, and the title, “happiness manager”.
If only every company employed happiness managers!
LL Bean - you can call them about anything and they’ll always be helpful and pleasant. Very generous with returns.
Some of my favorite restaurants (not chains) are favorites because they not only have great food but across the board great service as well, something I find lacking these days.
Costco in Hawaii Kai has the BEST customer service of anywhere I’ve been. The staff are always polite, happy to help with whatever the customer wants–want to split your purchases into several subtotals and/or put them on several different cards, no problem. Need assistance? Certainly! Problems with your Rx glasses–sure we’ll replace them for free! You want to return something? Sure, we’re happy to look it up and honor your return even with no receipt and no packaging! They even have complimentary motorized carts and wheelchairs with substantial baskets for folks who need them to shop with. They greet you with a smile and even offer free samples of a variety of products.
Verizon is the only service available out in my rural area. I’ve written on threads before how I deal with them. I have no no luck whatsoever trying to resolve problems on the phone. So I go to the Verizon store (a real and official store not one of the retail outlets that carries verizon and will accept your payments but not necessarily credit them in a timely manner ) I stay there till the problems are resolved. I politely ask whomever is helping me to call someone else when they can’t fix the problem for me right then. I just don’t give up. I am there for hours. I won’t leave till they have satisfied me. Fortunately I have lots of free time to do this. If I’m having repeated problems, sometimes I’ll find a helpful associate and get them again. But there is a whole lot of turnover.
LL Bean for me as well-
As much as is possible I shop local and owner operated: dry cleaner, grocery, butcher, florist, hardware, car wash and find excellent customer service. I’m sure being a regular customer helps.
We eat out a good bit and usually not at chains. We live in an area with lots of small, farm to table, restaurants. It’s a very competitive business and some don’t last too long. We have started following some of the wait staff to their next job. We appreciate and enjoy that consistency.
We live very close to LL Bean, and a lot of my friends work for them. The company treats its employees very well. One of my friends is answering phone calls as a temporary employee. She just loves talking to people, and has pleasant chats with all sorts of customers.
We love it that the flagship store is open 24/7, 365 days a year. It’s fun to shop there at 10 pm, when the store is practically empty. There are always plenty of clerks to help you, any time of the day or night.
@aMacMom, I made a change to Verizon over the summer and the estimated bill was hundreds off (I added a $10/month service)! I called and was told that because of the dates I made the change the estimated bill was simply an unprocessed bill and that when the actual one arrives, it would be correct. And it was. Maybe you should call them, ask them to record in your file your concern, and wait for the real bill. That way, if it is wrong you can fight it. I actually had them go through what the bill should be line by line, wrote it all down, and got the customer service reps name. I think it may be a “glitch” in their system which causes unnecessary customer displeasure and aggravation. Good luck!
Between the financial aid office and bursar. Had a small issue with FA office and an error they made which affected the tuition bill. FA sends us to Bursar, Bursar says FA office needs to fix the error first. Feel like a tennis ball going back and forth.
Why can’t we get the Bursar and FA rep together at once on the phone so we don’t go back and forth.
For the background, the FA office labeled my daughters outside loan as a scholarship. For the veterans CCs here, you can imagine the issues this would cause. My daughter lost her Work Study since it appeared she got more aid than she was suppose to have. It also caused some minor issues with paying the bill due to the setup the U had.
also thought this had been corrected in August and it hadn’t been. Did get the change and now the Bursar is saying the FA office needs to remove the loan as aid coming from the FA office. Why didn’t they say that in the beginning?
Keurig, Fitbit, Amazon have all been good for me in the past. This year 2 that stood out were smaller domestic companies–I have a soapstone sink that I got 6 years ago, and it started to crack. I contacted the company and they said, yes, we’ve had this happen a few times. Made me a new (redesigned for less chance of cracking) sink and came and installed it no charge. I didn’t expect that given the amount of time that had passed but they stood by the product.
The other was a company that makes truck bed covers–I ordered online and the day it arrived I got a phone call from the company saying we hope you like the cover and if you have any trouble with installation, etc, please call us and we’ll walk you through it. I though that was pretty impressive as well.
A couple of years ago we bought an egg slicer by Cuisinart; probably bought it at Tuesday Morning. Earlier this year, some of the slicing wires pulled loose. I knew it wasn’t repairable but just for fun I filled out a customer service form online. No answer but a week later a new egg slicer arrived at our house.
Another good company is OXO - several years ago we bought a Good Grips folding dish rack at BB&B. It had plastic side drains that snapped on. When part of it broke, I contacted OXO to see if they sold replacements. They sent one for free - this happened twice. So maybe the product didn’t really hold up over time but at least they stood by it!
Also surprisingly the Treasury Department has very good customer service. On two different occasions we had slightly complicated situations about reissuing old savings bonds in new names. They were quite informative on the phone and helpful in tracking the situation.
Boo Hiss for Frontier Communications. We have FIOS to our house and my wife has it to her clinic. One day the clinic’s internet went out. When it came back on, our home internet (and our whole neighborhood) could no longer connect to the business server. It two two weeks, probably 40 hours on the phone with low-level “tech help”, being hung up on multiple times, and over $500 in fees to her IT consultant to finally get to someone who knew what he was talking about and with the knowledge to fix it. She was on call so she had to spend her evenings at the clinic instead of at home.
After they fixed it they offered her a free month for her troubles. Forget it. She is sending them a bill.
) I stay there till the problems are resolved. I politely ask whomever is helping me to call someone else when they can’t fix the problem for me right then. I just don’t give up. I am there for hours. I won’t leave till they have satisfied me. Fortunately I have lots of free time to do this. If I’m having repeated problems, sometimes I’ll find a helpful associate and get them again. But there is a whole lot of turnover.