Customer Satisfaction

They say that word of mouth is the best way to advertise and that the best way to get word of mouth advertising is to satisfy your customers. Although it seems like so many businesses couldn't care less about treating customers well or about teaching employees to be kind and courteous, there is still at least one business that will never let us down. I've never heard anything bad about this business. The closest thing I have heard is that people want to cancel their membership because every time they go there, they end up buying more than they need because it was such a good deal. You know the store I am talking about. If you buy something and then it doesn't work out, you return it and they just take it back without asking questions. Yep, COSTCO is the best store in the world. One rule I try to live by is that if Costco has want you want, you buy it there and don't even shop around because you won't find a better deal and if you do, you can return it.

So, with that preface, and since it is fast and testimony Sunday, I'd like to bear my testimony of Costco (read: word-of-mouth advertising). On Thursday night, I nestled in for a quiet evening of gaming only to be greated by the infamous Xbox 360 "Ring of Death"



I immediately called 1-800-4MYXBOX. Boy were they unhelpful. The automated voice-activated menus were a pain to work through, and I had to repeat myself several times to get what I wanted. Why can’t we just have a plain old “Thank you for calling, how can I help you?" instead of "tell this computer what your problem so I can transfer you to a real person in about 10 minutes from now." Whenever I talk to the computer lady I end up shouting at her, "Just let me talk to a human." When I finally did speak to someone, she said, "I am sorry, we cannot process a repair request right now, try calling some other time" (read: "I am sorry, we don't really care that much about customer satisfaction and that recording that said 'your call is important to us, please continue to hold' is really a crock to trick people into thinking we care.")

I decided that maybe having my Xbox break down for the month of final exams was a blessing but that I should try good old Costco. I've had my XBOX for over a year, my mom bought it in the States and I didn't have a receipt. Luckily, my mom keeps all her receipts and emailed me a copy so I could put Costco to the test.

I walked in, told the kind lady that it stopped working and about two minutes later, I had a Costco cash card for $400. Two minutes after that, I bout a brand new XBOX, with a bigger hard drive and two new games for $350 and had $50 bucks to spare for something else. HOW SWEET IS THAT? I didn't go in trying to beat the system or do anything dishonest, but I felt like the the lady in this commercial:



It was the true miracle of exchange that I learned about in Econ 110. I felt like I scammed Costco and Costco feels like I am the real sucker because I will get one step closer to being addicted to buying stuff there--it strengthens my resolve to live by the "buy it at Costco" rule.

So the moral of the story is that if you have an XBOX that you didn't buy at Costco, you should hope you don't see the ring of death. Also, "buy it at Costco." If you feel prompted to share you testimony of Costco, I will be interested to read about it.

p.s. I have to bear testimony of good examples because my brother-in-law, Benson did the same thing a month ago and word-of-mouth advertised to me.