Now for something completely different: two stories about excellent customer service I've experienced lately:
1. About a week ago our internet connection at the house become very spotty. The cable modem would disconnect and then reconnect a short time later. The disconnections happened unpredictably, and they were driving John and me crazy. So I finally called Mediacom, our cable and internet supplier. Within a minute I was connected to an intelligible, genuinely nice, smart, and helpful person. He remotely ran diagnostics on our modem and discovered no problem. He then asked me to check the connection to the wall. Turned out to have been a bad connection on my side - I should have checked it, but I've not loosened that wire in six months. I thanked the fellow, who wished me a great weekend.
2. I wanted to upgrade the memory in my MacBook Pro. The problem was the screw fastening down the memory cover was so tight I couldn't loosen it without stripping out the screw. John had no better luck than I. So I brought the computer and the memory to the Apple store at Stanford Shopping Center. I walked in, was immediately greeted, and I explained the problem. I pulled out the machine and pointed to the offending screw. The fellow whisked the machine away and I waited about five minutes - during which time I was politely asked three times if I needed any help. (And everyone smiled at me!). The door opened and the tech brought out the machine. He said they'd needed to apply lots of force to loosen the screw, and that they'd left it partially loosened so I could complete the upgrade - which I did with no trouble at all.
Now am I going to go back to my old DSL provider - who when I called made me wait on hold for a minimum of twenty minutes? Or am I going to buy another Dell, who when I called last I was connected to a singularly unhelpful tech in India after at least ten minutes of frustrating button-pushing to navigate a telephone menu system? I don't think so. (Plus I love my Mac...)
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