Thursday, January 12, 2012

Funny Flashback: The customer is always right!

At work today, my cubicle neighbor made a comment about one of our suppliers. She said that she wished she could just drive to the company and fill the order she needed herself.


This reminded me of the time a few years ago when I bought one of the first general Sony Ericsson phones with a 5 mpx camera. This was the first phone that I ever paid for, I had always opted for the free phones. This phone was great, imagine 5 mpx on a PHONE! To those of you younger readers, this was completely unheard of less than a decade ago!

This phone started to malfunction shortly after the warranty from the cell phone provider had expired, naturally. I was told by my cell phone provider that I would need to contact the manufacturer of the phone in order to see what they could do about fixing or replacing the phone. I was provided with the contact number for the Sony Ericsson.




I contacted the company and after several attempts finally reached a human being. This person wasn't the most helpful, but I was unrelenting. I was going to get a new phone or have my phone repaired and he was going to see to it! It took a few phone calls and emails to wear down his resolve but I did it. 


And with a bit of google searching I was able to determine that the company was only about a 45 minute drive from my house! Since I was in university at the time, I telephoned the man I had been corresponding with and I informed him that I would be at his office the following day to pick up my new phone. Not that he offered me a new phone....., but that was a minor detail he would need to get over in the following 24 hours. 


Sure enough the following day I went to the office, asked to see him, and this man came to the front desk, I think purely because the curiosity was killing him to see just who this woman was that was not going to give up until she got a new phone. The look on his face was priceless! He even asked me how old I was! He was stunned when I told him I was 22! He handed me a new phone in the box and told me that I should consider a career as a lawyer because I was so unrelenting and forceful - lol!  


The important point is that I got a new phone! They were obligated to honour the warranty for a year and kept trying to pass the buck off to the cell phone provider. In the end it all worked out, but the resolution should have been a lot quicker. When my plan came up for renewal, I got a blackberry, and then I moved over to the Iphone a few years ago. If you know you are right about something do not give up on it! It's the principle of the matter that really counts, and corporations need to be held accountable to customers!

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