Good customer service FOR ONCE (or twice)

Well! People certainly do have strong opinions about Lexus commercials, as it turns out. I have to say, I wasn't expecting to incite quite so much controversy with what I was thinking was a fluffy little post. But hey, the more discussion, the better, right?

Anyway, in the past couple of days I've had two amazing customer service experiences, and I feel compelled to share them here, because... well, if they'd been bad experiences I'd be ranting about them here, and really, it's only fair for it to go both ways, right?

So, first of all, the hard disk on my work laptop started making funky noises like it was going to die any second, and programs started crashing on my computer. On Monday, I contacted my company's IT department, who put me in touch with Dell directly. I was a little nervous about this, and picturing hours on the phone going from person to person with nobody able to help me (this has happened to me with Dell in the past).

But instead... well, it was amazing. I called up. In under five minutes, I was talking to a real person. I explained the problem to him. He had me run a couple simple tests on my computer. Then he said he'd have a new hard drive sent to me, free of charge. And a new adapter, too, because my computer has stopped recognizing mine. He had to talk to a supervisor to get approval for all this, so he said he'd call me back within an hour. I figured I'd never hear from him again, so imagine my surprise when 45 minutes later, my phone rang and it was him, confirming the shipment. And then, yesterday morning, the new adapter AND the new hard drive showed up at our door.

Seriously! The whole thing took me under 15 minutes on the phone, no ridiculous lengthy useless troubleshooting, nothing. AND it was free. I mean, I'm assuming this is because my company has some sort of enterprise-level contract with Dell, but still. It was AMAZING.

And then I decided to press my luck and call Comcast. We had a couple of promotions on our bill, worth a total of about $40 in savings, and they expired a month or two ago. At the time, I spoke to someone to ask if they could be re-applied and was told I had to wait 90 days. But because it just seemed ridiculous to be paying so much more, and reminded by a post at Get Rich Slowly, I called back. Again, I was given the same line about having to wait 90 days, but this time instead of just saying OK and hanging up, I asked if anyone was available who could make an exception.

And... well, turns out, there was! He transferred me to something called the "employee department" (has anyone heard of this? When we were with RCN back in DC, they had something similar). So when I got on the line with the second guy, I politely explained the situation and said that while I liked Comcast and didn't want to switch, if I wasn't able to get my bill lowered, I was thinking about canceling. I didn't invoke the name of any competitors (though there are competitors in the area), but I assume it was implied.

And the guy immediately said, "Well, normally we do ask that you wait 90 days between promotions, but of course we don't want to lose you as a customer, so let me see what I can do." Then he typed for all of 10 seconds and then offered me SIXTY dollars off a month, for the next six months, PLUS free Showtime. For real! That's MORE of a discount than we were getting before. All because I invoked the word "cancel," and was polite about it.

It's my understanding that in some areas, Comcast is the only alternative, so it's harder to call them up and make threats. And I totally get that, but you know, it's still worth calling, right? You can say that you're trying to cut costs and you're hoping you can get your bill lowered, and if you can't, you're thinking of canceling altogether. Even if you can't threaten to switch providers, you can still threaten to take away your business. And it's not an unfeasible threat... I imagine that lots of people whose incomes have been reduced are cutting out luxuries like cable and Internet. It sucks, but I bet they're doing it.

All I'm saying is, it's worth a shot. Sixty dollars a month! That's over $700 a year! Just from one five-minute phone call. Just call your cable/Internet provider and try it. And hey, if they call your bluff about canceling (assuming that it IS a bluff), you can always just "get disconnected." Right?