Topic: Sometimes Customer Service can be a good thing.

[Ken (OP)]

I have a really old Sears shop vac and needed another hose for it, so the natural place to go was my local Sears store in Winston-Salem.

They no longer stock in store the size hose (2-1/2 inch) needed for this old vac but the salesman found one in his database and ordered it for me. I actually wanted one 10-12 feet long, but they only had an 8 footer available so that's the one we ordered.

So... a couple of days go by and the package arrives with a nice shiny 6 foot hose!
Now the reasonable suspicion would be that whoever put the order together out in the warehouse had simply grabbed the wrong hose because everything along the way pointed to it being 8 feet long, including the packing slip that came in the box. 
The hose came from a supplier called Tidy Vacuums and the first thing I tried was sending out an email to the email address listed on the packing slip and then after waiting for a good while gave their customer service line a try.
Chris Jones answered and was very helpful, first explaining that all of the listings for this product, at both Sears and at Tidy Vac, were for the wrong length because the hose only came in 6 foot lengths. He had already started the process of correcting the listings so that no one else would have the same experience as me.

And now the good/best part... to make up for my inconvenience and the disappointment of not getting the 8 foot hose that was expected, Chris is sending out an additional 6 foot hose and a coupler at no cost to me. 

Thanks Chris!  :2thumbs:
Sometimes things just work out nicely... this is one of those times.

[Skhilled]

Great job, kudos to them. Actually, I'm surprised cause I don't like Sears much and don't shop there except for tools. But everything else is a tad overpriced.

I've had a similar experience recently. I have a digital cooking timer/thermometer. It works very well but the little clip that you use to clip it on a pan, etc. never worked properly. The holes were not cut right. I've never complained and made do without it for 3-4 years.

Some months ago I was going to make candy or something and our candy thermometer cracked so I was going to use the digital one but had no way to attach it to the pan. I figured that it wouldn't cost much so I checked the website and couldn't see where to order one, so I emailed them. I told them the model and asked how much it would cost.

I got a letter a few days letter asking me for my address and saying that they would be happy to send me a new one for free! I was very surprised and still offered to pay for it since I've had it for a few years but they sent it anyways.

[Ken (OP)]

Good job on the digital cooking timer Steve. 

Companies (some of them) often go out of their way to help make something right and it seems to be even more so in the past year or two, maybe it has something to do with the weak economic times we're having. 
Whatever the reason, it's nice to be able to contact a support person and get a positive experience with that person and get a positive/reasonable result for your issue.

[Lesmond]

I had similar thing happen to me, I ordered a tee shirt from the Tim McGraw online store for Lisa, we are both fans of his music, well 28 days went by and a very small parcel arrived, we thought there is no way this is a tee shirt.

So we opened the  package, low and behold there was an Elvis Presley limited edition pen inside lol

So I called them up, and got a very nice lady on the phone, I tole her what had happened, she couldn't apologize enough, and went on to say that the tee shirts were no longer in stock, and she said that she did not know when they would be! she said would you like to order a replacement of something else or a refund, I said I would like a refund please, she said no problem at all, and then said you can keep the pen also.

I done a bit of research on Google and found that the pens were worth upto $200 each!!!   :thud:

So we decided to put it on ebay... after the bidding ended we got $150 for it, and we also got the money back for the tee shirt too.

Good result all around I'd say :2thumbs:

Here's the pen.

[Ken (OP)]

That is amazing Les! Great job on the refund and the pen.  :2thumbs:

[Skhilled]

Now that's customer service!

[Lesmond]

Forgot the say. Lisa spent all the money I got from ebay lol..... cant remember what on though

[Skhilled]

LOL!