the Life of Zim

Recently in the blog I’ve had a couple of rants regarding companies and their customer service — or lack there of. At the end of one of these posts I my “Zippo” story about the best customer service I’ve ever had. Well today, I have another story to share…

Vornado Air makes fans, heaters, humidifies — basically anything that involves moving air. Their products are awesome. Laura won’t buy any fan — or is at least very skeptical about any fan — unless it’s a Vornado. She’s experienced the best and can’t go back. Not to just hype their products, but I have to agree with her. They’re just good, powerful, quiet fans. Anyway, about a week ago our cat, Thomas, knocked over our fan; the cover popped off and one of the three blades on the fan snapped off. I should note that these fans aren’t exactly cheap. We have the Midsize 630 which is a relatively small fan and cost about $60 depend on where you get it. So, when the blade broke we weren’t exactly thrilled about having to buy a new fan. As a shot in the dark, Laura sent an email — from my email, which is why the reply says, “Dear Mr. Zimney” — to Vornado explaining our dilemma, more to see if we could buy a replacement part directly from Vornado rather than buy a whole new fan. Here’s the response we got:

Dear Mr. Zimney,

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your patronage. If you would please provide your address, I would gladly send this part to you at no charge via UPS.
I hope you have a great day.

Sincerely,
Goldie Pappan | VORNADO AIR, LLC | Consumer Service

I replied with our address and a very sincere, “Thank You” and a week later we had a replacement blade on our doorstep. I reinstalled the blade and the fan has never been better.

This is the kind of customer service I believe we should all expect from those we do business with. If I spend $60 on a fan, I should hope that if that fan breaks, the company has the dignity to stand by its product and say, “if it’s broke, we could have made it better and we’ll make it up to you.” To that, I think some people immediately get this imagery in their head of adolescent males throwing stuff off of parking ramps to see if they can break it, since it won’t cost them anything to replace it. And I say, while there is that risk for a company, I sincerely believe that treating your good customers well, will in the end reward a company with happy, life long customers. The sad thing is that as consumers, we are helpless to demand this kind of customer service. Anyway, I could go on forever here talking to numerous examples of shitty customer service from shitty companies. But that’s not my point, my point is simply that Vornado gets it and they deserve to be recognize for it.