A few days ago, I ordered a monitor from Newegg.com in anticipation of my office’s completion this weekend. Surprisingly, it shipped that afternoon and arrived the next evening with only 1 day of total shipping time. Unfortunately, the box arrived with two large puncture holes. Immediately, I suspected shipper damage because the UPS guy was quick to hurry off my doorstep after leaving the package.
After plugging it in to my wife’s computer, I realized I received a defective monitor. The screen flickered constantly and couldn’t hold the picture at the resolution I selected. Brokenhearted, I navigated to Newegg’s returns and RMA section and entered the information to request a replacement.
Even though it was after business hours, I was immediately approved for an RMA. But when I pulled up the information to ship it back, the system told me that I’d have to pay over $23 to ship the monitor to the online retailer before they would replace it. It may just be me, but I really don’t like the idea of having to pay to return defective merchandise. But seeing as how it was past business hours, I couldn’t call the support desk to inquire about the situation. I begrudgingly left it set until the next morning.
I called the next morning shortly after they opened and waited on hold. Their hold queue was obnoxious, with some guy cutting in frequently and strongly encouraging me to do everything through their website. After about 10 minutes of waiting on hold, a pleasant-voiced agent came on the line to assist me. After explaining my situation to her and giving her my RMA number, I asked that she authorize a pre-paid shipping label to return the monitor. She put me on hold for a moment and then returned and stated that a pre-paid label was on its way to my email inbox immediately and thanked me for shopping at Newegg.
As I’ve written before, I prize quality customer service and punish poor service. The fact that I didn’t have to jump through any hoops and that the agent gave me a positive response in less than a minute reminds me why I shop at Newegg.com for basically all my computer and electronics desires, even if Amazon does beat them on price occasionally.
What other companies have you experienced giving good customer service? Or what companies do you want to call out for poor service? Good companies need to be applauded and bad companies need to be exposed. If you have an experience, share it here in the comments!
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Great Customer Service: REI, Abt Electronics, and ING Direct. (Disclaimer: I work part time at REI but I chose to apply there because I liked their customer service when I was just a customer.)
Horrible Customer Service: Best Buy. Best Buy. Best Buy and Bank of America. I haven’t purchased anything from them in three years because of how I was treated. I’m closing my accounts at Bank of America as soon as all my payments cleared. Comcast is pretty bad too.
–mark–