Floored

I have just had amazing customer service from a mammoth online merchant. Mark, bless his soul, ordered a rather pricey textbook last week from amazon.com and wondered why it hadn't arrived yet (it was due on Tuesday). When we checked the order status it had indeed been delivered on Tuesday -- to our old address 4 hours away. (I do not recommend one-click shopping for people who move every year.)

Unhappy forehead slapping ensued.

Mark was concocting plans to write a letter to our old address and plead for help from the new tenant there, whoever he may be. I decided to call Amazon to see what they could do for us.

Not only was it amazingly easy to find their contact information, but I was talking to a human within one minute. And that human happened to be not only articulate but competent and generous: he worked some magic and refunded the old book and told us to go ahead and just order a new one. I asked if we needed to do anything to retrieve the old book. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It was an honest mistake."

!!!

So here we are, no worse for the experience than a few days delayed on the delivery. I'm still shocked.