I was just thinking about this because I had to call Kohler about a problem with our kitchen faucet. I was impressed at how good the service was. Instead of sending us the part DH thought we needed, the woman explained that it was probably something else and that they would send out a whole new sprayer instead of the little washer DH thought we needed. The best part? FREE - the faucet has a lifetime warranty so the part and shipping are free.

Another great company for customer service is Kitchenaid. I broke my food processor years ago one day before the warranty expired. I had saved my receipt so I knew the exact date. I called them to see if I could get a replacement part and she said no, we'll send you a new one. They sent me a brand new food processor and prepaid shipping label to send the broken one back. If I hadn't had the receipt, they would have sent me a refurbished model - still a good deal in my opinion since I was the one who broke it.

On the flip-side, I'd have to say my health insurance company (BCBS) doesn't make great customer service a high priority. I always feel cranky after I get off the phone with them.

It's so amazing how much power kindness or rudeness has. When you speak to someone on the phone who is happy and truly helpful, it can make your day and conversely, when someone is rude, it can spoil your day.

So, what company has given you great service? Which ones have been terrible?

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Cecilia

"We must love them both--those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in the finding of it."
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Hands down the absolute worst customer service: Vonage (try zero customer service)
Bad but not the worst: Vistaprint (only had one problem and they really ticked me off because they didn't fix it in time and it was their fault ), Best Buy, Circuit City, McDonalds (I hate it but kids beg me to take them...ugh, their employees are so rude!)
Best: Nordstoms, Kohls, american express, Bunn, Chick Fil A

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

Overstock was good enough to call me to tell me a credit card billing had failed, and help me figure out why (when we moved, my bank updated my husband's address but not mine). They've also been good with giving info over the phone, and getting items to me in one piece. gemshow-online.com is also tiny and awesome. They answer emails, and send out thank you notes on their receipts. That's only useful if you make jewelry, though. Vonage had awesome Indian tech support, and terrible New Jersey tech support, and Linksys and Belkin also had some very nice techs.

I think Time Warner customer service sucks! So does GE appliances customer service.

I've had good luck with Zwilling J. A. Henkels (the knife company).


Lisa

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"It's not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got"

WORST.. KMART KMART KMART!!! I can't stand going there.. Tmobile, Sprint, At&t.. also are aggravating. Lowe's and Suddenlink too..

Best- Wal Mart around here.

Hurmph... On the line of gluten free foods... To me, hands down, worst CSR:

Hain/Celestial. The company makes products for the 'allergy aware' folks. But then goes on to have their CSR's state something along the lines of: We wash our machinery in between lines of things, but if you have allergies, dont buy our products.

Why else would you BUY the products... Because you LIKE to? No.

The food allergic community frowns upon this company

Me? AOL was horrible when trying to cancel. Ditto Verizon. Never had vonage. But I think they were bad too, from others experience.


Jason

Worst? Best Buy-- they are horrible.

Best? Circuit City-- They made a mistake, and went above and beyond the call of cuty to fix it.

Holly

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Forgiveness is love in its most noble form. -Anonymous

Best:
Publix. They've always addressed any and all concerns with a phone call, if I was not at the store, at the time of incident.
6pm.com. Helpful & knowledgeable C/S when you place an order. No questions asked returns.

Worst:
KMart. Mgt and employees tend to not care much about customers concerns, such as lack of stock, sale policies.
TRU. We're right, you're wrong attitude at the 2 stores nearest me.

__________________
~LOL~
ladyoleisure@lycos.com

Your heart understands what your head cannot yet conceive; trust your heart..

Best: Publix, Carter's, The Children's Place

Worst: Walmart, TARGET, ALL fast food places near me. I am SO sick of being served a cold limp burger from a pierced dude who looks like he was paroled yesterday.

The worst I have ever dealt with was Dell! They must contract out of the country because you never get anyone who speaks English and they are RUDE on top of it.

I think any company who contracts out like that has poor customer service, you just don't get treated the same.

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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer

Nordstrom has the BEST Customer Service EVER! I can't get CS anywhere as good as that place!

TIME WARNER CABLE SUCKS!!! I totally agree with that statement. Our cable box broke I called waited 3 hours for someone to call me back and tell me that they couldn't handle a problem this big. Waited another 3 hours for someone to tell me that this problem could never happen. I have now been waiting 720 hours for their supervisior to call me back. Well I am sure I will get a call from collections before the supervisior but I will not pay my bill till they fix everything not just some.

I have to say Home Depot has the best customer service. I can walk in there and ask for the do-hickey and the nice man takes me right to the do-hickey and tells me how to install it. Love Home Depot.

__________________
cmemaloy@yahoo.com


I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Life! is a coin. You can spend it anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once.

Best-Osh Kosh, Home Depot

Worst-Comcast, Time Warner (they sent us numerous bills after we moved for .99. Seriously. I thought they would just write it off like a normal company. Nope. I had to send a check for .99!

__________________
I've never lied to you. I've always told you some version the of truth.

Best - Publix - They are always so consistent and their customer service is awesome! I even called to tell them that they left a package of meat out of my grocery bag one time and that I couldn't make dinner because of that. They offered to have someone bring it to me at my house and when I declined, they said that they would give me another package when I returned to their store.

Worst - Northwest Airlines - I traveled with my mom and my DD who was 5 months old at the time and we took the time to write them a letter and mail it to them regarding the many, many problems we had with a flight we took in January (very, very late flights - missed connection - stranded at connecting airport for 6 1/2 hours and would not give us food or drink vouchers - rude, rude employees - extremely poor customer service at terminals and on flights - damaged stroller, etc., etc.). After getting to our connecting airport, we were told that if we ran to our connecting flight gate that we could probably make our flight (even though we were 45-50 minutes late). When we got to the next gate, we were treated so rudely and asked why in the world we would think the plane would still be there. After standing in line for over an hour waiting to rebook our flights, we were told we could do the same thing over their service phones since the line was not moving at all. Then we found out that we had already been rebooked on a flight, but that it had departed 10 minutes earlier. How were we supposed to know this? We ended up having to rent a car when we got to our destination because my aunt, who was supposed to pick us up, couldn't go back to the airport again because she was at my grandmother's 80th birthday party (which is the reason we were traveling and we missed it). By the time we got to our destination I was out of bottles and formula for my DD and ended up using the last diaper in her diaper bag. I couldn't have taken more formula and bottles if I had wanted too because of the stringent FAA security guidelines. They looked at my ticket (flight and connection times) and told me that they would have to determine the appropriate amount of bottles I could take for my daughter?!?!?!?

FYI, there were several other things that went wrong that I didn't even touch on in this post.

Northwest finally replied with a letter to us basically saying sorry you had some problems, but it’s not the fault of our wonderful employees and trust us – everything that happened to you is an exception, not the rule and you’ll see as soon as you are foolish enough to waste your money and fly with us again.

I am so furious right now. I wasn’t expecting free airfare, but I just wanted a sincere apology and I couldn’t even get that. All we got were excuses. I would rather pay more money to fly another airline than ever fly Northwest again!

My Wal-Mart is fantastic. Never had a problem there.

This is probably one company that 99% of you will never have to deal with but they made me mad.
Horton Crossbow Mfg. DH had a warranty issue, took his bow to the local shop. They sent it to Horton to be repaired. According to Horton if we had sent the bow in ourself there wouldn't have been a charge. The local dealer says Horton charged them, Horton won't confirm or deny. Just keeps telling me all charges are between the local dealer and me.

for stores:

Best: Nordstrom

Worst: Kmart & Walmart, it's a tie.

Kmart- if something rings up wrong it takes fifteen minutes and several rounds of clueless employees to correct it. Remember the battery deal like.. 5 years ago? Took me 45 minutes and 9, yes, 9 employees to figure out how to give me a $5 KM card for buying batteries. ARGH

Walmart- messy & kinda smelly. There are about 25 to 30 registers total but no more than 2 of them open at a time..oh wait, Kmart is like that too with the registers at the SuperK LOL yeah it's a tie -

I go to those 2 stores, about once a year when I am desperate for something and don't know anywhere else to get it or nowhere else is open 24 hours. Otherwise I avoid them both!

Best: Nikon Cameras.....my digital camera was damaged on a flight home from Phoenix in my luggage--the lens would not retract. I had paid $250 cash for it at Target almost a year before, had no receipt or warranty, but sent it to Nikon anyway. They fixed it for free and returned it within 2 weeks!

Worst: Our Deb's at the mall....my kids like to shop there but they always ask for ID when I use my debit card. I am so sick of fighting with the moron cashiers I just show my work ID......5 years old, bad perm, pale as a ghost----that pic don't look anything like me now but they take it. Like I would give that pierced parolee my Drivers License with all my info so they could steal my Identity.

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"It's not about how much baggage you have, it's about whether or not you can carry your own baggage with grace and dignity."

Best Customer Service--Dillards hands down..They went way out of their way for me..They located a bill of sale for me and sent it to me FedX

Worst Customer Service--Knogoly-everytime my dh has talk to them they claim the problem is on our end and sends a repairman to the house ...Dh gets so mad at them because he has to go thru their protocal ......just to prove that he is right the problem is on the end not ours!

__________________
Angels may not come when you call them, but they'll always be there when you need them.

Worst: Sears who sold us a defective fridge and made us endure months and months of missed service calls, people who said they fixed it and didn't, people who had the wrong parts etc.

I am one to pursue things and I was mad after missing all these days of work.

I followed up until I got the right person. She ended up refunding my money and sending me a check for $800 to compensate me for all the trouble so maybe with this particular lady I had one of the best cust serv experiences ever.

Best was Bare Escentuals. I had numerous problems with their cust serv so I called corporate and she ended up sending me over $200 worth of things.

When I have a bad experience with a company I try to get the issue resolved. In most cases if they do I will patronize them again but if they don't I won't.

In the case of Sears because of that lady I do go back but I will NEVER under any circumstance buy anything electronic or any appliances from them again.

__________________
The political system is broke and it's a joke.

Pardon my ignorance but what is Knogoly?

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The political system is broke and it's a joke.

We had a huge battle with BEST BUY last year. We paid the extra amount for the extended service on our Fridge. To make a very long story short....we went without a fridge in our home for almost THREE months because BB didn't want to pay. They put parts on that did not solve the problem, then had to order new parts and refused to pay to upgrade the shipping (parts could have been here in a week, instead it took six weeks). I had a long list of names, dates and times from my phone calls with them. Not that it did any good, but I caught them in many lies. Will never shop BB again.
We have had great customer service from several places...Pizzarea Unos, Linen and things, and I have actually had good luck with Time Warner (when I told them I wanted to switch back to satellite).

GOOD: Lands End phone reps, Rite aid, Macys, Kroger

Bad: Whirlpool phone reps. Johnny Rockets CS, WalMart

__________________
Live, Love, Laugh

Worst: Insight Communications Cable. Still waiting for two calls back from supervisor after 6 days.

Worst - Best Buy. I have had so many problems with that store that I gave up and will not shop there. Now they are being investigated for fraud in Conneticut and I can't think of any company more deserving. I hope more states follow suit.

Best - American Express, Target, Albertsons and Safeway.
ETA Amazon.com. THE best customer service I have ever had. I love that online store!

__________________
@@@
l/ l/ l/
Dont go through life,
GROW through life

Real eyes...realize...real lies.

Oh yeah!! Lands End is the best. The stitching started coming loose on DS's backpack. They sent me another one without even seeing the first one or requiring the return of the first one.
Super in my book!!

WORST: Bank of America! From time to time they offer protection programs....and call you ALL the time...they have a Do Not Call List, but you wait THIRTY DAYS before they stop calling for the same program........

Best
Pentax cameras, Hunter Douglas, Regal, pretty much any firearms company, and our local Truevalue hardware.
Worst
Hands down Kmart. How does that places stay in business. I have never been any place where the employees are so clueless and usually rude.

On another note. Do you think it's time some started a school to train people in the food service industry on how to wait tables? It seems as if good waiters and waitress' are getting harder and harder to come by.

I know where I live in west va they have classes in customer relations taught at the local community college.

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Live, Love, Laugh

It's our internet service provider.

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Angels may not come when you call them, but they'll always be there when you need them.

AMAZON.COM !!!! the best

The worst.... can't think of any right now but i will post if i remember any....