Good Customer Service Brings me Back

“Kudos to Amazon.”

I’ve had some success dragging my wife into my fountain pen addiction — she now possesses two fountain pens. A low-priced Pilot is the newer of the two. I recently “found it” in a box of her “stuff” in the den. I remembered giving it to her quite some time ago. “Look, Hon, do you remember this?” I waved it at her.

“What’s that?”

“A pen.”

Clearly she didn’t remember. We filled it with ink and found it still wrote reasonably well. This gave her a collection of two fountain pens.

“I need a dual pen case, like yours,” she said, “to carry my pens in my purse. I have the felt bag for the Waterman, but never felt comfortable using it in my purse … and now I have two pens!”

Indeed.

This was our second Christmas and the first one at home after our dear friend Loretta died. We consciously changed some Christmas traditions.

We kept our spiritual traditions and our tradition of exchanging gifts.
( This is not big stuff; the fun is the passing out and opening of a large number of stocking-stuffer kind of gifts. “Is this my calendar, Mom?” and, “Where’s my religious gift this year?” capture the spirit. )

I remembered Ellie’s dual-pen case need when I began shopping, which wasn’t until early December. I shopped Amazon without fear of running out of time and found many pen cases. Single, dual, triple. A variety of colors and styles. I viewed some very nice single pen cases, but settled on a very nice leather dual pen case.

Ordered Pen Case

Amazon notified me it had been delivered. I snuck it past my wife’s eyes ( this was not difficult as we both know how to stay out of each other’s way around Christmas ) and took it to my office. I was excited to see it. I beheld a very nice pen case, genuine leather, nice color. For. a. single. pen.

I was crushed … annoyed … irked … then doubtful. “Did I order the wrong item?” I went to Amazon, reviewed my order: “dual pen case.” Not what I received.

I noticed a link, “Trouble with your order?”

“Yes, exactly.” I clicked. Several new links, including “What I received is not what I ordered.”

Shipped Pen Case

“Wow!” I clicked again.

A new email opened, addressed to the supplier, containing the order number and item description, with additional non-editable text: “This item is different from what I ordered. Please send me a replacement. If you want the original item back, please authorize a return and provide return shipping instructions.” There was also a box to add text if desired. I desired; I described the discrepancy and added, “This is to be a Christmas gift, so please send the correct item post-haste.” ( I saw no way this was going to be worked out by Christmas. )

Amazon marketplace responded nearly immediately, stating to contact them if I had not heard anything in two days. I heard the next day. “Wow.”

“Are you able to send us a picture of the item received?”

“A picture?” I was flabbergasted, enraged, outraged, but, finally, compliant.

Almost immediately, “Thank you for sending us the images. We do appreciate it.”

Two more days and I wrote again. Almost immediately, “We have contacted the manufacturer and we found out that the double pen case has been discontinued and that is why they just sent the single pen case instead.  We are not sure why the manufacturer did that and we are truly sorry.”

Then the money part, “We can go ahead and issue you a full refund back to your account”

Then the truly impressive part, “and you can keep what you have received.  Would that be ok?”

“OK? Are you kidding me?” Given where we were, that was perfect.

I returned to Amazon, found a nice dual pen case with a promise of Christmas delivery ( in four days ), and received it two days before Christmas. Ellie now has need for another fountain pen, as she has three slots in nice pen cases and only two fountain pens.

Kudos to Amazon!

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