I scheduled a Yellow Cab last night to take me to the airport this morning at 5:30 am. I figured everything was fine. I was wrong.

I called Yellow Cab at 5:35 am and they didn’t have my reservation in the system. I’m beginning to think they’re “system” is a stack of Post It’s and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The dispatcher didn’t seem to care, so when she told me to “sit tight” and she’d call me back in five minutes, I decided to drive myself to the airport.

Now I’m running late and the roads are already packed so I arrived at the airport with 40 minutes to get through security and check in my bag. As I was running towards the gate, I heard the last call for my flight over the intercom. I was last person to board which means I sat in a middle seat for the next 4 hours. So much for printing my boarding pass last night!

I hate you, Yellow Cab. I will never call you again.

I was in line at the electronics department at Fred Meyer tonight and the man ahead of me in line was attempting to return an Xbox game he had opened. Here’s how it went down:

Man: I’d like to return this game.

Clerk: We can’t take back games that have been opened.

Man: But it’s in perfect condition.

Clerk: The reason we can’t take it back is because people would buy a game or CD, copy it and then return it.

Man: But that’s not what I did. I just want a different game.

Clerk: I’m sorry but once it’s opened, you own it. I think it has to do with copyright, the RIAA, or something.

I ordered a set of Automoblox cars after reading a positive review in Car & Driver. I like them as much as our kids do if not more. In the course of normal use, one of the wheels cracked and wouldn’t stay on the axel. I searched on Automoblox website to see if I could purchase a replacement wheel but only found extension kits.

I decided to email customer support explaining my desire to purchase another wheel and this is the response I received less than 30 minutes later:

Hi Brett:

I’m sorry to hear about the wheel that broke on your Automoblox vehicle. Unfortunately, we do not currently have wheels available for purchase. However, since our cars are not supposed to break, I’d like to send you replacement wheels free of charge. We redid our wheels some time ago, so by the fact that one broke, it would seem that on that car, you have the old wheels. I’d like to send you 4 new wheels in the mail and I’ll ask that when you receive them, you throw out the other 4 that you have. Please get back to me with the following information (address, phone, VIN) so we can quickly expedite this matter.

I look forward to hearing back from you and I look forward to hearing only good things from now on.

Thank you for your love of our products and my apologies for your trouble.

M

DirecTV is yet another example of a company that makes it easy to add services thereby giving them more of my money, but sets up barriers when I want to cancel a channel.

As a DirecTV customer, I added HBO to my service a few weeks ago. I’m planned to cancel it and setup a Netflix account instead. I logged into my account and tried to remove just the HBO programming. But DirecTV gives me an error that I need to call since it’s less than 30 days since I added the channel. What a crock.

Direct assumes that by forcing customers to call in and speak with a sales rep, they can talk a percentage into customers into keeping the service or programming.

Lame. Double Lame.

I know it’s hard to believe. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. But I’m happy to report that one such incident of good customer support took place this week.

After purchasing a barely used Motorola Q from Craigslist, I wanted to move my Palm 650 to Kim’s phone number and activate the Q under my current number. I was able to move the Palm to Kim’s number without a hitch from the Verizon website. But when I tried to activate the Q, the site told me I needed to call customer support.

I was surprised to hear a CSR’s voice at 11:30 pm but I was still skeptical. I explained the problem I was having with activation and this women listened to my problem and then said she could help me. She took some information from me and said that my phone activation would switch over at midnight. I asked her to also add the unlimited data plan to my service. The computer wouldn’t allow her to do this until the phone was activated. She said she’d write a reminder to herself to check my account in the morning and would back-date my service in case I ran up any data charges before that time.

I was still very skeptical after the hassle Sprint gave me for many years. Making any changes to my Sprint account was downright painful. So I waited a couple of days and called back to speak with another Verizon CSR. I was shocked to hear that notes had been attached to my account detailing my problem and request for the data plan. Wow, someone took the time to write notes so I didn’t have rehash my issue? No way. I was also told that my data plan had been back-dated to the day I called in to place the order.

I thought I was dreaming. Good service from a wireless company? Kudos to Verizon for fixing the problem and for doing what you told me you’d do. That’s a rarity in your industry.

I went to Taco Time tonight and ordered a shredded beef taco salad. I asked for black beans, ranch dressing and no salsa. The lady taking my order said, “Salsa only comes on the tostada salad, not yours”. Ok, cool.

So I was surprised when this same gal brought the taco salad to our table with salsa stacked on top. Before I could say anything she said, “They put salsa on it instead of black beans…..should I have them make you another one?”

I’m not sure why she took the time to ask. But she went back and had them make what I ordered so all ended well.