Thomas Distributing – Great Customer Service
A little Background
As a professional photographer, a number of my gigs involve using small flashes, “Speedlites”. They use AA batteries and so the green way to do things means using rechargeable ni-cad batteries.
So for the past few years, I’ve been buying my rechargeable batteries from Thomas Distributing, including the Maha MH-C801D charger, a wonderful unit that charges up to 8 AA batteries at a time, and includes a “soft” charging function that is gentler on the batteries, and a “recondition” function that will completely drain and recharge a set of batteries.
The charging unit has an informative LCD display showing charge levels, and feature status (“Soft charging” and/or “Conditioning”). I’ve been using it with many sets of batteries with no problem for 2-3 years now.
Problem
Imagine my surprise recently when I found that my batteries were being fully “recharged” in about 15-20 minutes, instead of the hour or two hours (with the soft charging function selected). Furthermore, the soft and condition buttons were no longer working either.
“Oh, no!” I thought, “Now I have to buy a new charger.”
Solution
I logged on to their website, and noticed that they had a “Support-Help” area. Reading through, I found phrases like “We handle all your warranty problems here. We do not force you to go elsewhere for warranty service. We want you to be 100% satisfied and to make your shopping experience totally hassle FREE.”
In today’s world of automated voicemail mazes and no-one-ever-reads-em EULAs, this was a pleasant revelation.
Well, it couldn’t hurt, I thought, so I dashed off an inquiry explaining my problem.
Imagine my surprise the next business day when I received an email response asking that I send my unit back in, and if it was truly defective, they would replace it. No Return Authorization#, nothing. (I emailed back just to make sure.)
So I sent the unit in.
2-3 weeks later, a new unit arrived via UPS.
Sweet!
When Customer Service Needs to Shine
Lesson: Often times we buy products or services, and everything, including the customer service, is fine. BUT, the true test of great customer service is when something is wrong.
Kudos to Thomas Distributing!
(If you’re ordering rechargeables, I suggest the “low discharge” models.
