Praising good customer service

I've had an adventurous few days, talking to more companies on the phone this week than I do in a few months! But I have discovered that good customer service really is alive and well.

Earlier this week I got a strange voicemail from HP, asking me to call them to confirm my order and shipping address. I hadn't ordered anything from HP directly (although we LOVE their products - my laptop, dock, printer, Rob's laptop, printer are all from HP), so the first thing I did was Google the number (found out it was legit) and then checked my cc statements online. Turns out someone had gotten a hold of my cc info and was happily buying laptops and doing expensive people searches (hello, that's what Google's for).

I called my cc company, Discover, and they removed the fraudulent charges (including one from HP that had come in as pending!) and closed my account. No liability for me, yay! The customer service rep worked quickly to get the account closed, and was super-nice. She even offered to overnight the new cards.

Next call was to HP. Their standard procedure is to call to confirm whenever the shipping address is different than the billing address. That's awesome of them! They were really nice too, and put a note on my address to confirm if future orders come in. I do order my ink from them (free overnight shipping), and placed an order after we got the fraudulent order canceled lol.

I had to change my cc number for direct autopay for a couple bills, and those customer service departments were friendly as well.

Of course you know already my experience at the emergency vet and how pleased I was with their customer service.

Last night I went to one of my favorite restaurants with a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen in awhile. Tampa Bay Brewing Company always has great service. No server ever writes down your order, and they ALWAYS get it right. We finished up, paid, then sat there for another hour or two. Normally when that happens, I am ignored by our server after the bill is paid. Not the case at TBBC - our server kept stopping by to see if we needed anything. He got a $6 tip on my $20 bill (plus whatever my friend gave him).

My favorite call/visit was this afternoon though - we bought Southwest plane tickets, and today I found that the fare from Tampa dropped $17 each, so I called to see if they'd give me a credit. Right away the answer was yes, before the rep even knew my confirmation number. She seemed confused by my saying it dropped $17 - turns out each of our roundtrip flights dropped $46!!!! So we have a total of $92 good toward future travel, good for a year! Woohoo! I love Southwest, even without the assigned seats.

When you get good customer service, be sure to say something - everyone I talked to was appreciative of my kind words and support.

Have you had any good experiences? Share so we can all do business with those companies (I've linked all the ones I mentioned)!
Jenn