Love and Customer Service

Ah Valentine's Day. A day of organised commercial goo, horrible padded cards with bears on them and icky cheap chocolate -  custom designed to make you a) miserable (singles) or b) inadequate (couples) . Three of my least favourite things are commercial goo, horrible padded cards with bears on them and icky cheap chocolate so I rebranded Valentine's to become the night 'I Was Cooking'. Basically it was going to feature all the things we love - mainly Jamie Oliver's tuna meatballs with Ben and Jerry's for afters .  Turns out there actually was no avoiding goo on my Valentine's Day. The real life kind. Two hours after putting my precious Fairly Nutty in the freezer......the ice cream was soup. Fridge/freezer was broken. Ouch.

I knew the fridge/freezer was under guarantee but I had a sneaky suspicion I had recently ignored one of those 'your guarantee is about to run out buy a new one for a zillion ££££'s' letters. After checking the order email for the fridge I realised it was purchased on  -  14th January 2010 - one month out of guarantee....NOOOOOOO.

But - ever optimistic and in possession of the finer points of the 1984 Sale of Goods Act I phoned the site I bought it from to see if there was anything they could do to help. I Googled the phone number, I wrote down all the things I wanted to say, I was prepped , I was ready for a fight. I didn't honestly believe a fridge should last 13 months. *deep breath*.....

I phoned the Co-Op...they agreed! I didn't even have to roll out my ‘I’ve been working in retail since ...yada yada’ patter. Within about 15 seconds of me telling my Ben and Jerry's trauma the customer service agent said they would contact the manufacturer who they'd expect to honour the guarantee and if not they would support the replacement of my fridge/freezer for up to 6 years (as per DSR's and SOG Act). Wow, I was in raptures. I was fully expecting a long drawn out argument which would culminate in me a) crying b) shouting c) calling the small claims court or d) all three. None of these things happened. It actually was amazing. Co-op phoned me back when they said they would, they contacted the manufacturer who is coming round this week to look at fixing the fridge/freezer and if they can’t fix it then we can talk about what they can do for me. It's all good!

And how many people have I told about the fabulousness of the Co-Op Electricals. About 50. I've tweeted, I've facebooked, I've bored my colleagues to tears. And now I've blogged about it.

The power of turning a bad into a good. Nuff said.