They do if the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is to be believed. In its 2013 report card, the research company punished the airline industry with an overall score of 69 out of 100. That would be a high “D” if you were in grade school.
But this isn’t another story about airlines treating us like self-loading toxic cargo, which is apparently what some crewmembers now call us.
The radio on Narendra Goel’s Honda Accord doesn’t work properly. But Honda won’t fix it without charging him. Can it do that?
LuAnn Ezeonu’s son is a United States Marine deployed in Afghanistan. A year ago, before he left the country, he bought a laptop computer and an iPod from the Apple Store at the Flatiron Crossing Mall in Broomfield, Colo.
By the time he returned to the States, his electronics were in bad shape. Which is where today’s story of unbelievable customer service picks up: with Ezeonu’s son bringing the dented equipment back to Apple after his deployment.
“He returned from his first deployment with a computer and iPod that were dusty, sandy, beat up and the disk drive in the computer wasn’t working,” she remembers. “We took it to this same Apple store.”
Mimi Rosenblatt lives in Los Angeles. She’s unemployed and disabled, having suffered from lung cancer that metastasized to her brain. Even a seemingly simple task like grocery shopping can be a challenge for her.
“I often stand there, looking for something,” she says.
Rosenblatt contacted me recently to let me know about the extraordinarily helpful workers at Vons, a local grocery store chain.
“An employee is always there, not only to tell me where the item is, but to actually take me there,” she says.
Today I’m introducing the Elliott Award for Excellent Customer Service, a weekly shout-out to companies that go above and beyond the call of duty to help their customers. And I’m pleased to announce the first winner: luggage manufacturer Wenger.
Christopher Smith bought a Wenger Swiss Army Pegasus Backpack in 2009 from a Circuit City store that was about to be shuttered. The retailer had marked the bag, which lists for $99, down by 50 percent, making it a real bargain.
Question: I’ve been subscribing to the Sunday New York Times for years. No one can explain why I was able to get the paper delivered until September 2012 (when I left the country) and can’t get them delivered in November 2012 (when I returned and re-subscribed).
My address has been the same since I’ve been subscribing. The city I live in has over 80,000 people. They couldn’t have taken all the subscribers off the route. Why me?
She had rescheduled a flight from Washington to Los Angeles on Virgin America to avoid superstorm Sandy, which was about to slam into the East Coast. But she’d forgotten to order a wheelchair.
Owen, who works for a nonprofit organization in Washington, had recently broken her foot, which was in a cast. “I had been on the phone on hold with Virgin America for well over an hour,” she remembers. Halfway to the airport, she decided to send Virgin America a tweet — a message on the microblogging service Twitter.
