Pleasantly Surprised and Thoroughly Impressed

As you guys know from yesterday, my Kindle broke over the holiday. I was very concerned what was going to happen. Well, I am excited to tell you, I had the best customer service interaction I have ever experienced yesterday afternoon.

I will share the important part of the chat I had with Bhuvnesh, the Amazon Customer Service Rep, below, but I can easily summarize as well. I chatted with this gentleman for literally five minutes, before he reached the decision that Amazon would be replacing my Kindle, and shipping it next day air, on their dime.

Yes, you read that right. I would not have to send them the failed device, wait for them to refurbish it, and hope that a working one would arrive, 4 to 6 weeks later. They did not have to inspect my device to ensure it was not user error or negligence that damaged it. He did ask a few key questions, as you will see, but I easily could have been lying in my answers (I was not, but I could have been, he had no way to know).

Microsoft, whose X-Box 360 red ring of death scandal is one of the worst in consumer electronics history, I'm looking at you. This is how customers ought to be treated.

Now, before we get all blue flowers and unicorn farts on Amazon, let's keep in mind their business model. Amazon does not profit from selling Kindles. In fact, they're losing a good bit of money on the Kindle Fire, at least on the hardware, on purpose. That's because Amazon makes money off the content we buy to view on our Kindles. A lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that, but the point is, it makes sense for them to do everything they can to make sure I have a working device, so that I can purchase more content.

Yes, it costs them money to overnight the device to me, and yes, it costs them money to simply replace my failed Kindle sight unseen, but it's good business. It keeps me loyal, and it keeps me in a position to be able to buy more content from them, content which provides them with the highest possible profit margin.

Now, none of this is to say that a corporation as giant as Amazon should ever be considered completely benevolent, or that you should stop shopping at local indie bookstores, but it is evidence that they are getting one thing right. In fact, this whole thing went down so fast and so easily for me, it quite literally blew my mind.

Do any of you have any customer service nightmares or wondrous dreams to share?

Holiday Woes

I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, and there are many things I could tell you about, and celebrate, but instead I'm going to bitch about a couple things, because I can.

My Kindle died over the weekend. I've owned it for about 9 months. I'm really pissed. I'd grown quite attached to it, I must say, in those few short months.

I was in the middle of reading a really good book, too. Not one I can talk about, though. Thankfully I have the Kindle app on my iPad, so all was not lost, but reading on the iPad is a little bit like spraying lemon juice into your eyes, at least by comparison.

There is nothing quite as cool as e-ink. Except when that shit dies. I have no idea what went wrong with it. On Christmas Eve, it just froze. It would not respond to any buttons. I gave it a hard reset by holding the sleep slider button over to the right for over 20 seconds, and that rebooted the device, which then worked for about five minutes, and froze up again. I was able to reset it 3 or 4 times on Christmas Eve, but by the time we got home from Grandma's house, it was completely screwed. Now it will not respond to any buttons, and will only light up when connected to the charger, but will not be recognized by the PC, or complete charging (where the indicator turns from yellow to green). Amazon better have some kind of warranty in place, because I've had it for less than a year, and just got a second and third Kindle (different models) for my kids.

I'll be contacting them today.

The other thing I need to bitch about is the NFL. Well, mainly, Adrian Petersen. Every game I watched over the weekend sucked., but especially the Vikings. Not only did they win a pointless game, and therefore needlessly remove themselves from the running for the first draft pick, but they lost Adrian Petersen, possibly the best player in the sport, for this season, and most likely some of next season. It seems so utterly pointless.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have been playing. He's a competitor, and that's what they do, but for him to tear his ACL and MCL in such a needless game, and then for the Vikings to go on and somehow win that game ... it just puts a really crappy cap on a truly terrible season.

All right, that's it. I'm done complaining. I really did have a wonderful holiday, otherwise. How was your Christmas?