Some sixteen hours ago, in a fizzle of over-bright LEDs, my old wireless router and DSL modem died and our house was plunged back into the dark, unconnected days of the last century. After struggling through an evening of ‘just’ TV movies, handheld games and books, I went out this morning and snagged a new modem/router combo from a very nice guy at Noel Leeming. After a little tweaking of our new Linksys Cisco WAG160N and the requisite configuring of XP on the family PC, Xandros on the Asus eeepc, OS X 10.5 on the iMac and Settings on the Touch, we’re digitally reunited with the rest of the world again.
I’m not in the habit of name-checking stores but I am doing so here because I received great customer service and was offered a great price. Even though a neighbouring branch of NZ’s leading electronics retailer had the same unit in stock at $50 less, I will no longer use that particular branch of the chain following a really nasty customer service experience during a visit some months back. When I saw the unit was $50 more in Noel Leeming, I asked the guy serving me whether they could match the price of the other store as I preferred to give him my business. Without hesitation, he agreed and the sale was made.
While I’m aware that price-matching is common practice and stores monitor each other’s price points, it was nice that they accepted my word on the price elsewhere and matched it without hesitation to seal the deal. However, it is a little depressing that I should feel this is an exception worthy of mention and that good customer service is not so common these days.
