Dancin Deer, from Somerville, MA, just made the grade. They deliver cookies, brownies, and donuts.
My son is spending the 6th year with his g/f’s family. A week ago, I caught a flash sale on one of their biggest packages. I happily paid for shipping across country. Not until Thursday, when my son was at the airport, did he give me his flight number. I said “too bad you didn’t get a direct flight, but are stopping in NC”. Turns out, the parents had moved there.
So, I wrote D Deer to reroute my package to a soup kitchen, a church, a hospital. They wrote back that would be sending another package to the family in NC. Isn’t that nice?
I sent DIL an email Zappos gift certificate for her white coat ceremony congratulations.
I missed a letter in her email address. I called the day it was to be delivered and found out she did not receive it. Within 30 seconds they had the address changed and had sent it to her. Not a word about the other possible person who may have also received a
$75 gift. Polite and nice during it all. And it really was my mistake.
Our local Sam’s Club. Two days before my husband died, I bought a lift recliner for him. A friend’s son was home from college for a weekend visit and picked it up in his truck for us. My husband sat in it one time for less than five minutes … was just more comfortable in the bed. The day my husband died, my sister called the manager st Sam’s and explained the situation, asking if the chair could be returned. Not only did he agree for it to be returned, he offered to drive his personal truck to our home to pick it up himself. It was a very kind act … over and above any expectations. He came and picked it up while I was at the funeral home making arrangements.
Just have to give another shout out to Southwest Airlines. Dropped D off at Midway this morning, not knowing if her flight was going to leave or not due to a low ceiling. Anyway, she was there two hours early, but before she checked her bags, she took off her coat to put in one of her suitcases. As she approached security, she realized her iPhone was in her coat pocket (and between two flights, she would be in airports/airplanes for almost seven hours today, so she wanted that phone). So she ran back to the ticket counter, and pleaded with them. They sent her to baggage claim, and someone there was able to connect with the ground crew, who brought her bag back up so she could get her phone out of her coat pocket, then she rechecked it again - made it to the gate with an hour left before her flight. I know she was very grateful!
I’ve got the most unlikely customer service story of them all. Yesterday DD left her laptop at an airport security checkpoint and didn’t realize it until we were in the air. During our brief layover at BWI we rushed to the security checkpoint to ask about the procedure to retrieve the laptop and the extremely helpful TSA supervisor made a few calls, found the laptop, put DD on the line with TSA at the original airport to confirm it was hers, and secured authorization for a family member to retrieve it. We were frantic; he was calm and incredibly helpful.
That’s right, I’m praising a TSA agent for customer service!
I could tell you hundreds of incredible customer service stories. I am a lawyer for a rural-oriented retail company, and our store managers and team members go above and beyond. We get great letters of appreciation.
During Hurticane Sandy we had employees who drove hours to pick up generators and deliver them to customers. We kept stores open even without power and used flashlights and written receipts to make sure customers had what they needed.
I have another government agency story, but on a much smaller scale. I needed an extra original of my birth certificate. I live hundreds of miles from my place of of birth, so I found the city website. It was by far the most lucid and easiest to navigate website that I have ever seen. It took literally a few seconds to find how to order the document and another minute to fill out the request form. And it arrived two days later. I plan to write to the city clerk with my compliments. Clunky websites that make it hard to figure anything out are a pet peeve of mine, as are entities that take weeks to fulfill simple requests. Who would have thought my fairly dinky hometown (which didn’t get much right back in the days when I lived there) could pull off something like that?
On another small note, today in the late afternoon I stopped in a local deli whose coffee I love for a cup to warm me up during my errand run. I didn’t realize they were closing early because of the sorta/kinda holiday and had already emptied and cleaned out the coffee machine and dispensers. The cashier saw my face fall as I told her it was okay, I’d just stop at Dunkin, though their coffee wasn’t as good. She then insisted on making a new pot just for me, even though the rest would probably go to waste. A little thing, but some days it just takes a little thing…
I have another Southwest story today! Three weeks ago when I was flying from Burbank to Seattle (with a stop, no plane change in Oakland), I left my Kindle in the seat back pocket. I didn’t realize it until four days later when I got home and my Kindle was missing. So I filed a report with the airlines online, and had gotten two emails that said they’d not had any luck yet finding it and if, after 30 days they had not found it, they would close the report. So I thought it was a goner, and bought a new Kindle. This morning I got an email saying they’d found it and were shipping it to me!! I think I can still return the new Kindle since it’s within 30 days of purchasing it. I really had a different expectation for that outcome!
My older daughter lost her iPhone last week. She was pretty sure she had left it in a cab. In her quest to be reunited with her beloved phone, she was greatly helped by a different cab driver who drove her to and from the parking lot from which her phone appeared to be emitting signals; an employee of the parking lot; and employees of an Apple store and a phone repair store in Manhattan. She said she thinks the people at the latter business actually stayed open later than usual just so she could have a place to hang out while waiting for the original cab driver to pass in the street outside and stop for her to run over and get her phone.