Tales from the Customer Service Desk

Two years ago, my wife and I moved into our first house.  Amongst the things we needed to buy as newlyweds was ice cube trays.  The first set we bought were such junk I finally broke them into 4 or 5 pieces in a fit of anger because the ice would not come out of them.  They were 99¢ each, but the plastic was too stiff to flex them enough to make the ice pop out. 

I began a search for the old time metal trays with the handle that levered the cubes out.  It didn't take long, thanks to the wonders of the modern internet, to find a set and get them to my door.  The company I got them from was Vermont Country Store, a purveyor of all sorts of things you remember from days gone by, and thought were no longer available.  These trays were exactly what I was looking for.  Every time I pulled that lever and cracked the ice to make a drink I felt like Don Draper, and the drinks tasted extra refreshing. 

It was a short honeymoon.  The metal these new trays were made from just didn't have the strength of the actual old ones and after three months of use the lever started to bend and it became hard to get the ice out.  In a fit of rage I tossed the trays in the trash and wrote an angry email to the folks up in Vermont, expecting to get an apology form email, and maybe a discount from them.  To my surprise, more than 90 days after the order and without getting the items back, they offered me a full refund.  Needless to say, they now have a customer for life.  Whenever I need anything quaint, old-fashioned or unusual, I check their website first.  So don't buy their metal ice cube trays, but do buy anything else they sell.

Tale the Second: 4th of July Swim trunks

In my work here at Savings.com, it is sometimes hard to be bombarded by great deals all day and not buy anything.  One day I came across an amazingly awesome pair of men's swim trunks that were American flag themed on K-mart's site, and I just had to have them for the 4th of July.  I tried two local stores and couldn't find my size, so I figured I'd order them online and still get them for the 4th.  Not being a small guy and not being able to try them on, I just ordered the largest size they had, which was an XXL. 

Several days later, they arrived, and looked great.  One problem, they had sent a small.  I called the 800 number, and talked to a nice lady located somewhere in middle America and she apologized, refunded me the shipping, ordered me another suit and directed me to return the size small to my local store for a refund of the purchase price.  Only problem is, I now didn't have my 4th of July suit for the 4th.  Oh well. 

A few days passed and I got another package, from K-mart and eagerly ripped into it, only to again find a size small.  Again a nice person on the phone helped me, and I suggested that maybe there was something wrong on their end with the item number, or inventory or something, but I left it at that.  I didn't reorder the second time figuring if it was wrong twice, it wasn't going to get right and it wasn't meant to be.  

Looking more closely at their website and at the swim trunks in the store, I discovered that there is no XXL and that there was no small listed on the website. I think somewhere along the line the small was accidentally listed as XXL and nobody caught it.  So it was either a computer error, or a data entry error, but who knows whose mistake it was.  I could actually have been the manufacturer's mistake and not K-mart at all.  I still don't have the suit and it's now out of stock, but I got all my money back as well as the shipping from both orders.  And K-mart allows returns at any of their retails stores--which is super convenient for me and I suspect most people.  I also learned that they still employ a staff of customer service reps at a call center in America who can understand silly problems like this, which is nice to know.