Customer Service Excellence
Buying baseball tickets in February for a game in September is always a bit risky. I had no idea that the Sunday game against the Diamondbacks would prove to be a season turning point. The Giants were half a dozen games behind the Diamonbacks and if they had any shot at all it would require a win on this particular Sunday.
We stopped for some Yank Sing Dim Sum to take with us into the stadium and climbed up to our View level seats. As it turned out the lunch proved to me more expensive than our four seats! We were there on Star Wars day at the park which made for numerous laughs.
The laughs stopped in the 8th inning when our narrow lead disappeared. As I gazed through my Pentax binoculars, I could see with great clarity that our season was quickly evaporating. I focused in on the Diamondbacks celebrating as if they had won the division. In fact they probably had. The binoculars are an important part of my game bag and they helped me see the defeat all too well.
I was bummed, disgusted and grumpy. I quickly sorted through the trash and the belongings and lead the family down the stairs and out of the park. When I got home I realized that I was no longer in possession of the case for my binoculars.
Now this is just a cheap case made of faux leather. I looked on line to try to find a replacement and my only option was a $30 case. That was crazy. I thought about sewing my own but that would more than likely be embarrassing. I thought about living without a case but with a safari in my future, I felt like a case was probably pretty important.
So, I wrote Pentax and asked them if they sold the cases because I couldn’t see any in their on-line store. I got a prompt reply saying that “no” they didn’t sell cases on-line but that they were inexpensive and they would be happy to send me a replacement.
Really? A few days later a small box with $2.10 of postage arrived with a carefully packed case. I figure that after adding all the costs up of fulfilling my request, it probably cost them $20. They had the labor costs of dealing with me, plus the cost of packing, shipping and the cost of the case itself. The binoculars only cost about $80 originally. I’m not sure that this was profitable, but I’ll be Pentax fan for life.
September 20, 2011
© Greg Harris, 2011
All Rights Reserved