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Rec: discountmugs.com

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

(click for a larger view)

Our family is celebrating my oldest daughter’s bat mitzvah in Israel this summer in a somewhat non-traditional way. She chose the David and Goliath story as the text for her bat mitzvah study project, and she will be giving a presentation on what she has learned followed by a tour of the Elah Valley, where the battle took place. You don’t take a busload of people into the Judean hills in the middle of the summer without having enough water for everyone, and we decided a neat way to accomplish that would be to give souvenir water bottles to our guests.

The design to be printed on the bottles was produced by Deb Houben, who also did our invitations. She’s a fabulous artist and a fabulous graphic designer, and if you need some design work done, you should definitely drop her a line (more info here).

We turned to Google, of course, to find a company to produce the water bottles for us. We ended up at discountmugs.com, which has a huge selection of all different kinds of water bottles at reasonable prices and with easy, straightforward ordering. We ordered our bottles from them after business hours on July 15, and they arrived July 23. I was able to easily watch their progress of our order through a tracking page on their Web site. The end result is exactly what we wanted.

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JanSport inaugurated into the Consumer Activism Hall of Fame

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Recently, the JanSport backpack I’ve been using for many years broke — the pull tab broke off of one of the zippers.

JanSport packs have a lifetime warranty.  Following the instructions on the JanSport Web site, I sent the pack in for repair or replacement.  The Web site promised a turnaround time of about two weeks.

About a week and a half later, I got this amusing postcard in the mail:

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Zipcar! w00t!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Join Zipcar and get $25 in free driving!I recently joined Zipcar.  I have been incredibly impressed in all of my dealings with them.  Some examples…

Like just about every other company nowadays, Zipcar has a form on their Web site you can use to send them a message.  However, unlike most other companies, they also publish an actual email address you can use to contact them, whether you’re a customer that.  And unlike just about every large company in the world, real people actually read and respond to those messages in a timely fashion.

You can also reach them on the phone.  It’s easy to get through to a real person, and when you do, the person you’re talking to is actually able to help you. What a concept!

I discovered shortly after joining that if I had enrolled as an MIT alumnus, the application fee would have been waived and the annual membership fee cut in half.  I sent them email and asked: could I switch to the MIT alumni plan; could they refund my application fee; and could they refund half of my original membership fee?  I expected the answers to be no, no and no, or at best yes, no and no, but I received a response less than an hour later indicating that my account had been updated and a credit would appear in the next few days on my credit card for the application fee and half of the membership fee.

I sent some suggestions to them by email about car features, and I got back a detailed response (>1000 words!).  Much of it was explanations of why some of my suggestions were unworkable, but the person who responded took the time to explain why they were unworkable in a way that made perfect sense, rather than just ignoring me or sending a generic “we will take your suggestions into consideration.”

These examples make it obvious that Zipcar is one of the few large companies nowadays who actually understand how to provide exemplary customer service.  On top of all that, of course, is the fact that the service they’re providing is incredibly cool!

P.S. If you’re not a Zipcar member and you want to try it out, email me and I’ll send you a referral, and we’ll both get $25 in free driving!

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Product recommendation: Skip Hop’s “Pronto” diaper changing kit

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Much of what I attempt to pass off as useful content on my blog is criticism of products and companies that, in my opinion, just don’t measure up.  I have very high standards, which means that I’m often disappointed.  However, it also means that when I’m happy with a product and recommend it, you should sit up and pay attention. :-)

A nifty little item that my wife bought a few years ago, Skip Hop’s “Pronto” diaper changing kit in denim, has turned out to be such an amazingly useful and high-quality product that I feel I must recommend it to others.

In a nutshell, the pronto gives you a large, comfortable changing pad that can be wiped clean; a container for wipes; pockets for wipes, diapers, cream, etc. as well as extra pockets for pacifiers, keys, wallet, phone, or whatever; a nice little carrying handle; and a clip-on strap you can put around your wrist or hang on your stroller, all in a nifty little package that rolls up and fastens closed easily.

Diaper bags wear out, but this one just doesn’t seem to.  We’ve had it for several years, and it looks as new as the day we got it.  The changing pad hasn’t cracked, faded or become discolored, all of the pockets and zippers are intact, and not a single stitch of the sewing that holds everything together has become undone.  We did have to replace the wipes container when one of its hinges broke, but this doesn’t bother me at all, considering that I keep a stash of several such containers because their nature is to get lost or break all the time.

If you’re at the stage in parenthood where a huge diaper bag is necessary to carry all the items you consider essential when you go out with baby, then the Pronto isn’t for you.  But if, like us, you can sometimes make do with a few diapers, some wipes and a changing pad, then I can’t recommend this product enough.

I haven’t tried any of Skip Hop’s other products, but since small companies tend maintain a similar level of quality throughout their product line, I suspect that their other stuff is top-of-the-line as well.

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Kudos to Shaw’s

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Apparently it’s a good week for customer service.  Following up on my compliment to CVS, I also want to single out the Shaw’s at 1065 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  Here’s the letter I sent them through their Web site:

Greetings,

I want to commend the performance of the cashier, [name elided], who rang up my groceries last night.

I bought three bags of pizza dough.  While ringing up my groceries, he checked each of the bags carefully and noticed that there was some discoloration in the dough in one of them.  He brought this to my attention, and I was able to go back to the refrigerated case and get a replacement.

When I got back to the checkout aisle, I noticed that he was checking my eggs to make sure that none of them were broken.

I was impressed by, and grateful for, [name elided]‘s conscientiousness.

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CVS hits it out of the park

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

We go through a lot of Pampers diapers, so we buy them in large-count packs to save money.  At CVS, we always buy the larger “Jumbo” size.

At least, we did until recently, when the Jumbo packs suddenly disappeared from the shelves, leaving only the smaller “Mega” size, whose per-diaper cost is 11% higher.

After noticing that there were no Jumbo packs in two separate visits to CVS, I asked the night supervisor what was up.  She said that if there were still prices for the Jumbo packs on the shelf, then they were just out of stock, but if the prices had been removed from the shelf, then they’d been discontinued.  I went back to the shelf and checked, and indeed the prices of the Jumbo packs were gone from the shelf.

I went home and sent a complaint to CVS through their Web site.  I explained that we buy the larger packs to save money, that we spend over $500 per year on diapers, and that if they don’t bring back the Mega packs, we’ll have no choice but to stop buying diapers from CVS.

 Today, I got back this incredible response from a CVS district manager:

Mr. Kamens,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us in regards to the availability of the “Mega” pack size of diapers. We have in fact discontinued the “Mega” pack size of diapers however; they are being replaced by the box count diapers which is an even better value than the Mega size. Unfortunately this product will not be available until the beginning of October. In the mean time I would like to offer you the Jumbo Pack size diaper for the same per diaper price you were paying when purchasing the Mega size package. This would bring the price for the Jumbo pack to $10.79.

I will contact the store to make them aware of this. I would also suggest that you bring a copy of this email to authorize the sale price.

Also as a token of my apologies for the inconvenience I will be sending you out a $10.00 CVS Gift card and you should be receiving this in the next 7 – 10 days.

Nicely played, CVS!

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Awesome experience at the Hartford, CT Marriott

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

August 27, 2009

[name elided]
Hotel Manager
Hartford Marriott Downtown

Dear Mr. [name elided],

I am writing to compliment your hotel and its staff for a wonderful recent stay by my family.

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Tiggit Mail: Good program, great author

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

TiggitLogoI recently set out to find a decent IMAP client for my BlackBerry Bold, since although the BlackBerry has native IMAP support, my employer’s IT department has disabled it.

I found two to consider: LogicMail, which is free, and Tiggit Mail, which costs $30.  Both are under active development.  I evaluated them and found them both to be inadequate.

I sent feedback to the authors of both applications describing the bugs I’d encountered and the missing functionality which I felt was essential.  The Tiggit issue list was significantly longer than the LogicMail list, ~20 items vs. ~5, and I really didn’t expect a fast or substantive response from the author.

To my surprise, he responded the same day: “Thank you for this very useful list of issues… I am happy to extend your trial period until such time as the defects are resolved… It is very helpful to get honest feedback like this, and if there are any other thoughts you have, please don’t hesitate to email.”

With this, he and I started a discussion which has continued for over a month.  Our exchanges spanned several beta releases of the application, each of which addressed more of the issues I’d reported.

Yesterday, I installed the most recent beta and found to my delight that all of the issues that I considered showstoppers were fixed.  This didn’t stop me from sending the author a laundry list of previously reported issues that still weren’t fixed and several new issues as well :-) , but since all the major ones were fixed, I went ahead and purchased a license, as I’d promised the author I would do as soon as I felt the application was useable.

A few hours later, Paypal notified me that my license fee had been refunded.  I wrote to the author and asked him what was up, and he responded, “I could not take the money after all the constructive feedabck you have given.  The license is of course yours, free of charge as a token of my appreciation.  I hope tiggit will serve you well, and you will continue to provide helpful comments.”

With his prompt, courteous, and effective response to my feedback, the author of Tiggit Mail transofmred my initial, negative experience into a positive one.  He took my feedback seriously, recognized and acknowledged the validity of my concerns, and addressed them quickly.  He made it clear that he values his customers and understands that the point of what he’s doing is to make them happy.  Finally, refunding my license fee was a perfect example of what Jeffrey Gitomer talks about in Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless: when trying to turn around a dissatisfied customer, always give the customer more than he expects.

I heartily recommend Tiggit Mail to anyone who is looking for an IMAP client for the BlackBerry.  It’s well worth the $30 license fee, even if you don’t receive a refund. :-)

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PayFlex: an FSA administrator actually does something right

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

As of the beginning of the year, my employer is using PayFlex Systems to administer their healthcare flexible spending account (FSA).

My experience in the past with third-party FSA administrators has ranged from mediocre to bad.  However, this time I’m writing to give kudos, because when I went today to submit my first claim through PayFlex’s self-service Web site, I discovered that they have an intelligent, well-designed, innovative claim submission process, the kind that makes you say, “Why the heck can’t everybody do things this way?”

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Recs for downtown Boston businesses: Long’s Jewelry, Minuteman Coin & Jewelry, Watch Hospital, Downtown Barbers

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

I went for a walk downtown today to get a new battery for my wife’s watch, and I was pleasantly surprised to have positive experiences with four different businesses.  So here’s a shout out to…

  • Long’s Jewelry and Watch Store at 100 Summer Street (617-426-8500).  I stopped here first.  The woman who helped me was friendly, knowledgeable and efficient.  She looked at the watch, knew off the top of her head that she didn’t stock the right battery, referred me to The Watch Hospital, and told me how to get there (down Summer to Washington, right on Washington, left on Bromfield).
  • Minuteman Coin & Jewelry at 29 Bromfield Street (617-778-0409).  When I got to Bromfield Street, I didn’t see The Watch Hospital at first, but I saw the big “We replace watch batteries” sign in Minuteman’s window, so I thought perhaps that’s what the woman at Long’s meant.  I stopped in, and the man behind the counter told me he didn’t stock the right battery and suggested that I try, you guessed it, The Watch Hospital.
  • The Watch Hospital at 40 Bromfield Street (617-542-8332) quickly replaced the watch battery for $7.95 and even set the watch when they were finished (granted, they set it a few minutes fast, but even most watchmakers aren’t as obsessive about accurate time as I am :-) .
  • Downtown Barbers at One Bromfield Street (617-338-0926).  My previous searches had turned up no reasonably priced barbers in downtown Boston, but apparently I didn’t search well enough.  Nick cut my hair quickly, did a nice job, and charged me about the same as what I pay in Brighton ($16 for a men’s cut).  And this is a real barber shop, as evidenced by the issues of Playboy on the table in the waiting area.
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