29 March 2007
A company that does things right: Costco
I have a long commute. Is about 100 miles each way. Tuesday evening, on my way home, the bottle of water I was drinking caught up with me. I stopped at a gas station, and ran inside. Once inside, I swapped my sunglasses for normal glasses and clipped the sunglasses to my shirt. Then I found the bathroom was closed for cleaning. Hurriedly, I went back out to my car to quickly pump my gas and figure out the next restroom along the way. On the way there, I realized I had lost my sunglasses there.
About half an hour after first stopping, it made it back. A woman had found them and I collected them. The lenses were fine, but the frame was quite badly bent. I assume they fell off when I put the gas nozzle in and I must have rolled over them as I left. They were fairly new; I got them at Costco in early January.
I stopped at Costco on my way home, to see if they could repair them. The woman started looking at them but the lens popped out. One of the screws on the side that held the frame shut had fractured. “Come back tomorrow,” she said. “I need to drill this screw out.”
So Wednesday evening, I again stopped by. When I asked about picking them up, they were still broke. As soon as the woman realized what was wrong, she grabbed another frame of the same style and transferred my lenses into it. I was fully prepared to spend $100 and wait several days if it had come to that, but instead, she fixed it with new parts right before my eyes. There were no numbers to call, nothing to sign, no RMAs to obtain, she just fixed something that was purely my fault.
Costco may not offer every service under the sun. But of the services they do offer, their execution is unparalleled.