April 10th, 2009

On Great Customer Service

In November 2008, I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD 595 headphones. A few weeks ago, they developed a really annoying rattle in the left can, so I set about looking for the receipt so I could take them back. It or the original packaging were nowhere to be found.

I don’t live near the store I bought them from - Richer Sounds in Watford - so I phoned them up and asked if I could return them to a different store. They said yes, and also offered to look for my receipt on their system - an offer I accepted, but they couldn’t find me.

Convinced that the receipt had been thrown away with the packaging, today I ended up at the Cambridge store with my headphones but no box or receipt, pretty much saying “My headphones are broked!” while looking sad. They had another go at finding me on their system and couldn’t, but before I could even start asking if I could phone my bank and get them to find the transaction on my statement they replaced them for me anyway!

I was so impressed with their service that I bought a new remote control - a Logitech Harmony One to replace my ageing Harmony 880. When we got home, my girlfriend saw the red “Thank you for purchasing!” leaflet they put my receipt in and said “I’ve seen one of those!” and disappeared upstairs. Thirty seconds later, she returned with the original receipt for my headphones!