Customer service experiences? Post yours.

I cracked and shattered the handles on 3 fairly pricey Henkels knives. The knives were abused by house guests and I had no expectation for a warranty claim. They are just expensive knives and I wanted them fixed. Henkels wasn't particularly communicative; but 7 weeks later I received 3 new knives.

 

I am generally very frugal about my clothing but 2 years ago I went shopping at the Orvis store and fell in love with a leather coat.
The one they had there was size 40 and too big for me. It was spring and they didn't expect to re-stock until fall.
The saleslady was very helpful, and I left with her business card. I think it was obvious how I was lusting over that coat.
I called her a day later to ask about the logistics of ordering one.
She helped me through the process and actually had them make me a custom size 38 short so it would fit perfectly. No up charge for the custom work and she even waived the shipping fee. I had my coat delivered to my door 6 weeks later.

 

Rival sent us a brand new complete programable crock pot along with a mini-crock, instead of just the ceramic crock (it had developed a nasty crack which kept getting worse) which was all we wanted/hoped for since it was out of warranty. Now this did take some explaining and whining on my part, but they did come through.

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I dealt with a service witer at a VW dealership. The young man was good and he busted his ass....but....he never used common curtesey words & expressions such as: sir, ma'am, thank you, you're welcome, etc. I really wanted to tell him that he would seriously help his career by being more courteous.

 

Borla, VW didn't do you a favor. We also had the window issue with our 2001 VW Jetta. Our window actually shattered. The problem had been noted by VW, but as a service bulletin not a recall; VW America is well known for taking forever to issue recalls. If a recall has been properly issued your repair would've been fully covered.

If your VW was a 2000, and ours is a 2001, and they both had the same problem, that says a lot about how long it takes VW America to handle known problems.

And on that note--I took the car to a VW dealership very near (walking distance) work, not where I bought it. The service rep told me that they would repair it but only because it was VW authorized repair, and for repairs I really should take my car to the dealership where I bought it. He was a dickhead about it.

Perhaps VW America has improved their handling of known mechanical problems and customer service in the last 14 years. They totally sucked when we had numerous problems with our 2001 Jetta 1.8T. Some problems were done under waraanty (after much insistance by me, "No, the engine shuttering, idling very roughly, and hard transmission shifts have nothing to do with the engine being cold. It's happening all of the time. You need to keep checking the engine."), some under service bulletins (which we had to research and mention to them several times), and some under recalls (we usually already had the repair done under a SB). And some questionable repairs we paid for (exactly how did the very well protected and solidly made oil dip stick tube get cracked? There is no way it broke on its own).

 

Working in the auto industry, I've seen many things like this. 90% of the time the dealer can give assistance and repair it t for free, or they can assist with the repair paying a portion of the cost. Alot of it depends on the customer history at that dealer and with that particular auto maker. I hate to say it but it can depend on how the advisor gets paid, and how much money the dealer has to spend.

 

I don't know if you want to look at this as customer service but I think it qualifies all things considered.
When my ADA ended for last year and I needed to sign up for new insurance I was pretty sure I was screwed.
I wasn't working and Alaska's idiot governor didn't take the matching funds for expanding medicaid.
The insurance I had was based on the library job I'd had but that was gone so what plan was I going to get that was even close to something I could pay for?
The man who came on the phone was from New Orleans.
I started out trying to be cut and dried about the whole thing but soon broke down telling him a lot more details than he really needed to know.
I apologized but it was clear how desperate I was.
In a kind voice he told me about his mother loosing her home to Katrina and how for a long time three families lived in one house with no running water or electricity.
Then he went to a great deal of work to find me the best possible deal and I'm pretty sure lied a bit on my paperwork.
He offered to set me up at his new house if I ever came down to visit New Orleans and told him he could stay at mine here but he said he could never come someplace so cold.
My life would be in a terrible place if it wasn't for that very cool man.

 

I have a couple recent customer service experiences based on Amazon orders. The first was for a new golf club. Shipment tracking stated it had been delivered, but it gave a really weird time for it. I called the local USPS (it was shipped UPS, but they have a local agreement for the USPS to make the final delivery) and it turns out that that tracking number basically stopped about 200 miles away, which completely contradicted what the internet said. So I contacted the seller and explained what happened. They sent me an email that initially looked liked just a repeat of the initial shipping confirmation. Super long story made slightly less long, they had just shipped me a replacement for the missing club. It was initially confusing because there was no real explanation. I still consider it great customer service because they solved the issue immediately.

Second incident I'm actually still working through right now. This time the package was shipped through Fedex. They delivered it to the wrong house, which is pretty understandable because there is another house about 300m from mine with the same number on the mailbox and there are no intersections between us, just a turn on the road which is where the road name changes. However, it took 4 calls from me to their general customer support line to figure this out. They had told me multiple times that the local distribution office would call me, but I got nothing. Finally I got the customer support hub to patch me over to the local office and I talked with them. They told me where they had delivered it to and I said I would go check since its literally a 1 minute walk from me, I asked for a number to call him back in case I got it so they could log it, but he refused saying they had the number restricted due to not having staff to answer the phone. I didn't get in touch with the residents until this morning and they said they hadn't received anything. So either they are lying or fedex is lying. Either way I didn't get my stuff. I called Amazon after that and explained what happened. There was a little bit of misunderstanding on the phone because the package included one order and part of a second, but I was able to get it cleared up and they are giving me a full refund on the items.

Basically, I've had good customer service experiences working with Amazon and the sellers I've dealt with on there, but Fedex is another matter. There was not only no communication from them, but an active barrier in place to prevent communication with the people who actually handle the problem.