Customer service

I'd meant to blog about this for some time, but Things kept getting in the way. And this subject is "customer service." Usually, this is the cue for a rant on my part. This time, however, I'm giving credit where credit is due.

Remember last month when I kept bellyaching about my new camera being broken? I was loathe to part with it, since I could still use it to take pictures. I just couldn't get the memory card out. Not good for long-term usage, but tolerable short-term. Well, I finally bit the bullet and jumped through the online hoops to start the return process from Amazon.com (they being the retailer from which I purchased my Canon Rebel XTi in the first place, being at least $100 cheaper than any other vendor--local or online). The catch was, to return the camera, I had to pay for postage and insurance (to be refunded later) which cost me $18. I was not happy with that. I was surprised and delighted to discover that my replacement camera was shipped out the same day I mailed my broken one in. The did not wait for the broken one to arrive first, as I'd expected. Two days later my replacement arrived. And there was much rejoicing.

Then, last week I got an email notice from Amazon that my refund had been processed and applied to my credit card. Great. But when I checked, only $6 showed up. Uh... I don't think so. I've read reports of where corporations figure out the point of maximum profitability, how much they can fleece their customers before said customer cries foul. Basically, at what point does the average customer decide that it's not worth the effort to get a proper accounting of things? The fact that $6 was exactly 1/3 of what was owed me smelled suspiciously like a formula to me, although it may well have been a simple processing error. Either way, I fired off a terse email pointing out the error, and to Amazon's credit the missing $12 was forthcoming the very next day, with profuse apologies from the guy handling my account. So hey, Amazon done good and gets high marks for prompt action on all counts.

My other customer service tale features Ison's Nursery & Vinyard. Four years back, after we moved into the New Braunfels house, I ordered three grape vines from them to grow over the dog run fence. They were two Orlando seedless varieties and one named black muscadine. All of them produced fruit this past year... except that the Orlando seedless weren't green, seedless grapes as advertised. Instead, the were purple and seedy. After some research, I figured they were Fredonia grapes, which is a nice variety appropriate for my area, but not what I'd wanted. Several emails to Ison's generated an apology from them, and the explanation that their Orlando supplier had been selling them Fredonias instead of Orlandos for several years until the mix-up had been discovered. They no longer carried Orlandos, but offered to send me some other variety as replacements. None of their traditional grapes appealed to me or were suitable for my growing conditions, but I'd really liked the fat black grapes produced by the muscadine plant. They're very sweet, but also have an unexpected nutty flavor to them you wouldn't expect in a grape. So I asked for a single self-fertile bronze muscadine as a replacement. And met with no response. I sent several more emails over the winter months, each one disappearing into a black hole. I figured they were ignoring me, although I'm not the type to give up. Last week, however, a nice little muscadine plant arrived in the mail. So yay Ison's! I still need to put it in the ground, but I'm looking forward to trying out it's fruit in a couple of years.

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