On Customer Service...

There are things in this world I am not supposed to understand. I guess customer service is one of them.

We have been in a crisis state lately over the baby's diapers. For some reason the right tab on them continually comes detached from his diaper - the glued part, not the Velcro one. It means that his diaper finds its way down the leg of his sleeper in the night, and every morning we have to clean up a mess. At our wits end, Daddy wrote the Pampers diaper people and shared with them our tale of woe. They offered compensation. We were happy.

This past summer, our $50 (cheap) set of binoculars fell on the boat, and broke in half. Now while it seems at first that there would be an advantage to having 2 monoculars, the novelty quickly wore off. Eventually Daddy got around to writing to the people at Tasco expressing our dismay. They offered compensation. We were happy.

Through some quirk of fate, Tasco and Pampers both had their compensation packages arrive on the same day.

The Tasco package was a big box delivered by UPS Express Freight to the house, and in it was a brand new set of binoculars, an apology letter, and contact information in case further follow-up was required.

The Pampers package was a thin envelope sent regular mail with a coupon in it for $8 off a Mega-size or larger box of diapers bought within 30 days. The diapers that we bought? Were a package of 174 size four diapers, which retails for $36.97. So we have a coupon for about 1/4 the price of the box of diapers, and only available at select retailers. And even if we had bought the smallest package available, and that was what was failing, it still retails for $18.00 or so. So no matter what size package we had bought, they were not even compensating for a new package at all.

Wanna guess who is getting my business again?