Actual Customer Service?!

Normally if you have a problem with an item you bought at the store or received as a gift you have to do a quick mental game of weighing out the Pro's and Con's of dealing with Customer "No-Service". I have had to play that game twice in the last couple weeks and I wanted to briefly share my experiences.

Garmin: For my birthday (32) I found a sweet deal on a Garmin Forerunner 205. For those of you not intimately familiar with a Forerunner 205, it is a 'personal training device' for runners or bikers. Basically it is a huge nerd watch that has the capability to track your running routes through the use of GPS.

So, I got the watch for my birthday and anxiously awaited its arrival. When it finally did arrive I ripped into the box like a fat kid in a candy store. A couple minutes into programming the watch (I told you it was nerdy), I realized that one of the buttons was not functioning (I was ticked!). So the next morning I called Garmin and told the Customer Service Rep of my situation. He said, "No problem. How about you ship it to us and we'll replace it at no cost." He then proceeded to give me their UPS account number so that I could ship the watch to them for free. He told me that they would send the replacement watch "Next Day Air" as soon as the received the broken watch. I sent the package off on Thursday morning and just told myself that I would have to wait until Monday or Tuesday before I could go out and run with the watch.

Friday afternoon when I got home from work, there was a package from Garmin sitting at the front door. I received the watch the very next day!!!!! I could hardly believe it. Garmin has earned a repeat customer. (Side note: I have programmed the watch and still haven't used it - I have no motivation to run. Oh wait I am running a marathon in October, maybe I should go run right now!?)

CafePress: Yesterday I received a belated birthday gift in the mail. It was a t-shirt from CafePress. CafePress is one of those online t-shirt design sites. Well, I had Jen open the box and tell me what I had gotten. It was a gray/heather "Arthritic Departmen" t-shirt - it was awesome! When I got home, I realized the shirt was going to be too big and the color of the font was very "girly" (it really didn't look like the example on the website). I emailed CafePress lastnight asking about returning the shirt and getting a different color. When I checked my email this morning, I had a couple emails from Customer Support. After an email telling them that I wanted to exchange the size and color of the t-shirt, I was told that they would be sending out a new shirt to me in the next week or so (that's cool). They also said that they didn't want the exchange to cost me any money, so I could keep the original shirt as well!

So. If you have the need for anything GPS related or want to see some awesomely funny shirts, sweatshirts, etc. Go check out these two places. They have awesome Customer Service (unlike Walmart - which is a totally different story from last night)!