Awesome Customer Service

Recently around the CITRT (Church IT RoundTable) there has been some disappointment and frustration expressed about customer service so I feel obligated to share a really positive customer service experience.

While catching up on my TIVOed episodes of Chuck (i am just getting into the show… I love the nerd herd cars) I received a dreaded phone call from my wonderful wife,Natalie.  She called rather, calmly I most note, asking me to come an pick her up.  She had been at an early evening meeting at work and was on her drive home.  She told me she had blown a tire on the car and was sitting along side the highway.  So I changed into some old jeans and headed out the door…. Calling Jeremie, my network admin, to ask where the closest turn around on the interstate near Natalie’s disabled car would be. 

Side note: when we hired Jeremie he commuted 45 minutes each way to work for 2-3 months so he was quite familiar with the highway Natalie was on.

So I change the tire, which has a hole in the sidewall as big as 3 of my fingers, and head home for the night.  I wasn’t terribly worried about replacing the tire since we purchased road hazard on the tires when we purchased them two years ago.

Wednesday AM I called the Goodyear location in Springfield, IL where we had purchased the tires before we moved.  They told me I could go to any Goodyear location.  So I drive to our local Goodyear location and show them the receipt from the Purcell Goodyear store in Springfield and they say they can’t honor it.  For those who don’t frequent Goodyear, some locations are company stores others are partner locations.  Well the location is Springfield is a partner location… Hence the store here can’t help. 

So we call the store in Springfield and they tell me their road hazard program is the same as the corperate Goodyear stores… but I should have a set of stamps for the road hazard… I don’t.  In fact I notice the invoice says the customer needs to sign the bottom indicating they have receieved the stamps… well I there is no signature on the bottom of the invoice… so well… you draw the conclusion.

So Glen at the Peoria Goodyear says they will sort it out and he will call me.  So I head back to the office. A little later Glen calls and tells me the Springfield store has no record of my purchase and they aren’t able to do anything…. No record of my purchase I have the original invoice in hand… they didn’t keep a copy are you kidding me?

So decide as a last ditch effort to call Goodyear corporate customer service.  I explain the whole story to the customer service agent and he puts me on hold. (Calling Glen in Peoria) A few minutes later the customer service person comes back on and explains Glen has ‘more options’ and will be able to assist me.  Long story short, the customer service person approved replacing my tire even-though there wasn’t any record of my purchase of the tires or of the road Hazard…. That’s really cool.  A company who does something to say ‘yes one of our affiliates screwed up but we value our customers and will make it right.’

2 hours later Glen calls and my car is ready to pick up…  Now I just need to call Purcell in Springfield, IL and get them to refund my illegitimate, non-existant road hazard that no one has record of…

Now I have to be thankful for a couple things, 1. my wife wasn’t hurt when the tire blew out, 2.  i didn’t have to buy a new tire… 3. the tire didn’t blow when we had a full trunk of stuff traveling back from Thanksgiving in Ohio and it was pouring down rain…