It started out with our cell phone. The day after Christmas DH went shopping with my Dad (an interesting experience in itself, which I can't blog about because I didn't go.....learned that lesson many years ago after a 3-hour shopping trip to get my Dad one pair of shoes!). During this outing, DH dropped my cell phone and it broke apart.
Poor guy, he tried to put it back together, but it wouldn't stay together. Interestingly enough it would receive calls and I could hear him talking on it (when I called him from another phone), but he couldn't hear me. So we needed to get a new phone. Now, unlike most other people with cell phones, we don't use our cell phone enough to warrant a "contracted" service phone, so instead we use a prepaid service through TracFone. This is much, much cheaper for us in the long run as we spend maybe $50/year for the number of minutes we use on average. So we ordered a new phone from TracFone to replace the broken one. Here's where it gets interesting. We selected 3-day shipping. Took five days to actually arrive....and that's with originating only an hour away! Tracking through FedEx showed they sent it 3 states away before sending it back where it originated, then finally sending it on to our fair town.....only to hold onto it for another 24+ hours before finally delivering it. Ugh! Once it was finally in hand, I went online as instructed to switch the same phone number from the old phone to the new one. It didn't work. Then came the fun of dealing with Customer "Service." They call it "service" but I'm not sure they understand the meaning of the word. It took 4 1/2 hours, 8 people (none of whom were native-English speakers which only made it that much more difficult to communicate), and much frustration to get the phone number switched to the new phone.......only to have it end up being able to make but not receive calls. A cell phone is not very useful if you cannot receive calls on it! One guy even tried to convince me it was a problem with the cell phone tower causing the issues. At that point I gave up and decided to call back a different day to try again with different people. Amazingly enough when I tried the cell phone 2 hours later (ummm.....that would be about 6 1/2 hours after starting the whole "quick and easy" process!) it miraculously was able to receive calls as well. Thank goodness because I really was not looking forward to dealing with more customer "service" people about this. Whew!Now on to my other, much more pleasant, experience. DD received an American Girl doll (Mia) for Christmas, much to her delight.
Mia had been ordered back in October and inspected upon arrival to make sure everything appeared to be OK. Everything appeared to be OK. The one thing I neglected to check was the toy doll-sized MP3 player she arrived with. It was supposed to play music at the push of a button. Unfortunately on Christmas morning DD discovered that this particular one did not work. Even changing the itty-bitty button battery (that DH made a special trip to the store to buy) did not fix the problem, so it wasn't just a dead battery issue. Also, one of Mia's leg warmers was sewn shut so it couldn't be put on the doll. So 2 problems for the price of one! So I emailed American Girl's customer service department (since I couldn't call on Christmas Day because they were closed). I wasn't very hopeful of getting replacements since Mia was 2008's "Girl of the Year"----dolls that are only made for one year in limited quantities, along with the accessories in limited quantities. Of course, that is why I had ordered her well in advance of Christmas...... Amazingly, I received an email back the next day stating they would be sending replacement pieces immediately! The new leg warmers arrived the following Monday (note that they arrived before the previously mentioned cell phone!), along with a new set of headphones to go with the toy MP3. Unfortunately, we did not need the headphones, just the MP3.....which was not included in the shipment. So I called immediately and talked to a very nice lady in the customer service department. She did all she could and was unable to locate a new MP3 in stock (not surprising considering it was at that point the last day of 2008 and all of Mia's accessories had long since sold out). She offered to have a supervisor do some research to see if one could be found anywhere and they would get back to me in a few days. I assumed I would not hear from them for about a week considering the New Year's holiday and weekend. Imagine my surprise when only 3 days later a box is delivered containing.......the toy MP3 player! And it worked!! DD was sooooo excited! I was thrilled with the rapid response to the issue from American Girl! They impressed me even more with their customer service when I received a phone call from them today checking to make sure that it had arrived in working condition and that we were pleased with the resolution to the issues we had had with Mia's accessories. I have never before had any customer service department follow up with a phone call like that. I must say I am extremely impressed with the level of customer service provided by the American Girl company. And of course, so is DD who now has all the working accessories she wanted to go along with her doll (which she has hardly put down since receiving her almost 2 weeks ago).I am glad that the experience with American Girl followed the one with TracFone. I much prefer happy endings. And that was definitely a happy ending.
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