I can be easily irritated. I know, I know, this surprises all of you who know me as a sweet and yielding little thing, but, gosh darn it, when a company lets me down, I want to ream their bloated stinking asses until busloads of tourists start coming 'round to gawk at the new Grand Canyon.
Bitching about shabby service is easy. Lauding great service doesn't seem to happen often enough. So this poast is a little of both.
Among my recent on-line purchases are two different items which both managed to disappoint. I contacted both companies to tell them about the issues. Both responded fairly quickly to my complaint.
Instawares.com is a company that acts as a distributor/seller of commercial kitchenware. I was looking for an attractive yet sturdy shelf that would hold a countertop microwave oven. I found one, via Google, on Instawares' site and the grainy, small photo looked right. The dimensions were right. The price and shipping were ... well, not the best, but it looked like a good solution for me, so I took the chance. The product arrived in a reasonably timely fashion. It was, however, entirely unsuitable. I expected a nice looking white metal shelf with support system and mounting hardware and instructions. I received a stamp-cut sheet of metal, with machined bends and curves, then lightly spray-coated with a scratchable -- indeed already scratched -- white paint on one surface. Two enormous, shiny metal flanges were also supplied. That was it. It was utilitarian, ugly, flawed, and unusable.
I wrote to the company, and a few days later someone responded telling me they'd be happy to take a return of the product and refund me -- with a 25% restocking fee and I pay shipping. Oh, and stay tuned, cuz they'd get back to me with an RMA one of these days. I paid with PayPal, so I cannot dispute the charge with my credit card company.
Go ahead and do business with Instawares if you wish, but be aware of that practice. Also take a look at all the ratings sites -- a lot of unhappy Instawares customers, mostly complaining about their shabby customer service practices.
The other product was a cool LED dog tag. Nicely designed waterproof bauble you hang from the dog's collar (or from your backpack, or your kid's earlobe, or wherever). Squeeze it, it emits a very bright light (white or red, your choice). It has a flash mode, too. I picked up four of them via Amazon. The company's name is NiteIze. Sadly, the four tags I got were flawed in manufacturing -- bad switches. So I wrote to NiteIze. I heard back quickly from someone who actually gave me her name and a direct line phone number. She would be delighted to send me replacements. I just needed to tell her what color and give her an address. She would send the replacements out and provide a return label so I could ship the faulty tags back to them.
NiteIze offers a variety of pretty cool light related products and accessories. Check 'em out, and if you get a chance to buy their stuff, be happy knowing that should there be a problem, they'll do things the right way.
I want to be extremely pissed off at LensCrafters who messed up my Rx FOUR TIMES, but they're so nice about it that it's hard to stay angry. Four times though, sheesh.
On a happier note, Zappos is consistently great about shipping immediately, getting the order exactly right, and making returns easy-peasy.
Next time I'll just buy more shoes instead of ordering new glasses. For what I paid, I could get 10 very nice pairs.