Customer for life

I’m sure all of you remember my post on my broken skis a few months ago (sarcasm). But in the off chance you forgot, here’s the post.

Short version: I broke one of my skis on a fall late in the season at Solitude this year. This is what it looked like:

I’m sure this happens semi-frequently, but this was a first for me. I was hoping that Rossignol/Dynastar had some sort of replacement program that would allow me to buy one ski on a discount, so I emailed them to see what could be done. This was the response I received:

Mmmmmkay….not much detail in that email. So I emailed for some clarification (do I need to remove the bindings? do you need both skis or just the broken one?). Since I was passing through Ogden on Friday, I dropped them off in person at their distribution center. After a very unofficial solo tour through the warehouse and employee break room (who let me in here?), I found Keith, the Rossignol group service manager. He had me write my name and address down, and sent me on my way. I had no idea what was going to happen after that. Were they going to repair it? Send me a new ski with a bill?

Today (five days after dropping them off) I found this on my front porch:

Opened it up and found these inside: 

A brand-new set of this year’s Legend Sultan 85’s. I was shocked.

It’s so refreshing to see companies who are willing to back up their products 110% and who are willing to go out of their way to take care of their customers. I owe a huge thanks to Rossignol/Dynastar. You guys have a customer for life now.

He either comes across as extremely defensive, or extremely confident (or perhaps both). My favorite quote: 

In reality, we think the open versus closed argument is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is, “What’s best for the customer – fragmented versus integrated?” We think Android is very, very fragmented, and becoming more fragmented by the day. And as you know, Apple strives for the integrated model so that the user isn’t forced to be the systems integrator. We see tremendous value at having Apple, rather than our users, be the systems integrator. We think this a huge strength of our approach compared to Google’s: when selling the users who want their devices to just work, we believe that integrated will trump fragmented every time.

Although I have to laugh a bit when later on, he criticizes 7-inch tablet screens, because, as he says:

Apple has done extensive user testing on user interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them.

I don’t know how he can say that touchscreens under ten inches are limited in their “touch reliability” when Apple’s iPhone screen works just fine at 3.7 inches.

Tags: business apple

What do I get from this infographic? Southwest Airlines continues to eat everybody’s lunch in the airline industry. Notice their marketshare continues to increase as everybody else decreases. JetBlue (my second favorite) continues to grow, but total “passengershare” for them is a small 3.2%.

What do I get from this infographic? Southwest Airlines continues to eat everybody’s lunch in the airline industry. Notice their marketshare continues to increase as everybody else decreases. JetBlue (my second favorite) continues to grow, but total “passengershare” for them is a small 3.2%.

Can’t wait to see what next week’s Mac media event will unveil. iMacs/Macbooks with Retina Display?

Tags: apple business