Why customer service is good

Judging by the reaction I received to yesterday's blog, a lot of you have had your own Verizon customer service horror stories.

Here's a quick example of how not every company is clueless when it comes to taking care of their customers.

While on my just completed vacation, I took a two of kids over to Manatee County (Fl) Golf Course to hit a couple of buckets of balls. The kids were using my clubs and as fate would have it, Sam, the 21-year-old, somehow snapped off the head of my 3 wood.

The clubs were a Christmas present, and while it is more than possible the 3 wood was defective, my first thought (which I didn't share with Sam) is that he had probably hit the club against the ground and snapped it off. (Sam has only recently started playing golf.)

I have never been one who gets upset over broken things, so we continue to hit balls and afterwards, I told the kids we would driving down to Dick Sporting Goods, where my wife had bought the clubs, to buy a new 3 wood.

But the 20-year-old salesman didn't want to sell me a new club. He wanted to replace it for free, since it was only a month old.

"Do you have the receipt?" he asked.

"Of course, not."

"Well, do you have the club head?"

"No, it is out on the driving range."

The salesman called his boss, but was told without either the receipt, or the club head, he couldn't replace it.

That's fine, I said. Just sell me a new one.

Well, that turned out to be harder than I thought. They didn't have the same exact individual club--it only came as part of a set--and I didn't like any of the other 3 woods they had in stock.

I thanked the salesman for his efforts, and left the store.

On the way back to the house, Nick, my other son who had gone with us asked "did you really like that club."

"You know. I did. I would like to have that exact club back.

Just for laughs, I headed over to the driving range to see if we could find the club head. We got everyone on the range to stop hitting for a minute, wandered out and found it.

We went back to Dick's. Found the salesman and showed him the club head. He happily opened a box set of the identical clubs, took out the 3 wood, and wrapped it for me. No charge.

Guess where I will be doing business from now on?