[iGig]

My guess is they won't answer, they don't care about anyone's jacket, their ski trip or another company's policies.
I think the op's email is in Bose's recycle bin.

 

[omegaman]

Forget about Bose, I am amazed that North Face changed a 5 year old jacket that you damaged yourself. To me that doe's not make economic sense, maybe a $20 voucher or something but if you gave a new jacket to every customer you would soon be out of business !!!!!!

 

[nleahcim]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omegaman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Forget about Bose, I am amazed that North Face changed a 5 year old jacket that you damaged yourself. To me that doe's not make economic sense, maybe a $20 voucher or something but if you gave a new jacket to every customer you would soon be out of business !!!!!!

Are you kidding? They made a lifetime customer out of me. Whenever I need winter gear I first check for North Face stuff. That jacket was stolen or I lost it recently and you'd better believe I went out and bought an essentially identical North Face jacket.

The amount of business that they'll get from me over my lifetime due to this probably was doubled. For my case at least, I'm sure it works out very well for their advantage from a purely fiscal perspective. Plus - I always recommend them to anybody looking for winter wear and recount the same story I told above. Good customer service pays off.

 

[synaesthetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omegaman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Forget about Bose, I am amazed that North Face changed a 5 year old jacket that you damaged yourself. To me that doe's not make economic sense, maybe a $20 voucher or something but if you gave a new jacket to every customer you would soon be out of business !!!!!!

It makes perfect sense. Considering what those jackets actually cost to produce, they are making money by retaining the customer.

Business really isn't that complex. Put out a quality product and back it up with great customer service. If either of these are missing, you will eventually fail. Unless the government bails you out. D:

I work in the customer service field, for a company that produces a crap-terrible product and has mostly idiots working for them. Because of this my company is failing. I could get laid off at any time. I go insane talking to customers who have dealt with other reps who were either rude, insulting, stupid, didn't understand the product or outright lied.

You know a company is in trouble when the customer service reps are being pushed to sell more than to address product issues, and your managers just tell you to "do what you can to get them off the phone quickly."

 

[Mercuttio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nleahcim /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you kidding? They made a lifetime customer out of me. Whenever I need winter gear I first check for North Face stuff. That jacket was stolen or I lost it recently and you'd better believe I went out and bought an essentially identical North Face jacket. The amount of business that they'll get from me over my lifetime due to this probably was doubled. For my case at least, I'm sure it works out very well for their advantage from a purely fiscal perspective. Plus - I always recommend them to anybody looking for winter wear and recount the same story I told above. Good customer service pays off.

Definitely the way to go for a smaller company. I'd take a look at their products for that.

Recently I bought an RS1 on ebay, and one of the screws that holds up the right can was stripped and made the whole thing loose. Called up Grado on Monday, and John told me he'd just mail me another one. And I did offer to pay. There's no warranty on a 10+ year old product that is second hand... but he's doing what he can to show me that I'm a valued customer.

I wish these things were part of the Bose scheme, but they're just not necessary for them to do business and it sucks for the customer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif I work in the customer service field, for a company that produces a crap-terrible product and has mostly idiots working for them. Conversely my company is failing. I could get laid off at any time. I go insane talking to customers who have dealt with other reps who were either rude, insulting, stupid, didn't understand the product or outright lied.

You're not at Belkin are you? Heard a lot of awful things like that lately and I know they're gonna run aground soon.

 

[m0ofassa]

*watches the large corporation ignore the little man*

 

[synaesthetic]

Even larger companies can be taken down by the unhappy customer.

I work for Gannett, which is a very large media conglomerate that owns just under 100 newspapers in addition to a few hundred revenue-generating websites and 27 TV stations. They're pissing customers off left and right, and because of it they're failing.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercuttio /img/forum/go_quote.gif You're not at Belkin are you? Heard a lot of awful things like that lately and I know they're gonna run aground soon.

No, as I mentioned above, I work for Gannett.


Quote:

Originally Posted by m0ofassa /img/forum/go_quote.gif *watches the large corporation ignore the little man*

This is 2009. There is no "little man," and if there is, he isn't even aware there's a fight going on.

 

[m0ofassa]

You know how much I dislike spinning minor characters, right?

I'd like to believe you that there is no little man, but given the current global crisis I doubt you can really say otherwise. As a capitalist western world we are the command of large companies and from their perspective one customer is not as important as well... revenue.

 

[cyberidd]

So I have a Bose question for everyone: when Bose first got their start in headphones were they any good? You would expect that to build a reputation as a maker of fine equipment you would have had to have made fine equipment at some point...

 

[Shingetsu]

I think they have one set of computer speakers that is OK, but not for the price.

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercuttio /img/forum/go_quote.gif See, the problem here is that the email essentially comes down to a threat in the end. Bose knows that plenty of people know their products for what they are and hate them. But they occupy an interesting position in the market: it's actually cheaper for them to pick up a new customer at this point than keep an old one. The ad money's spent, everyone thinks they're the bomb, every 20 seconds they'll sell another pair regardless. Guilting a company like Bose into doing anything just doesn't work well. The last thing they want is a precedent set that they'll repair or go outside of their warranty.

and this is the very 1990's thinking that's killing american companies right and left

as an industry, american CE got away from caring what customers thought, and basically decided it could charge whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, and nobody could do a thing, because the marketing was good and even 5000 pissed off customers couldn't make a dent

look at CompUSA and Circuit City as the best examples, these two were pros at the "crap customer service" game, brushing off customers and overcharging for everything, now they're both gone

also look at Dell's re-organization and re-imaging over the last year or two, around 2005-2006 they lost their sales leader position and were looking at losses by the end of the decade, purely due to blowing off customers and selling products with less than stellar QC, they've since rehashed and re-imaged, HP has been dealing with the same issue (in amongst many, many other things)

I get the point that a single customer means very little in the scale of these companies, however at the same time, the CE retail industry is really starting to feel the result of poor customer service and overcharging

now, do I believe this will ever befall Bose? doubtful, its hard to kill something that has a cult of personality like that (its been tried a few times with Apple and more directly Steve Jobs, each time it just comes back bigger), but at least theres hope

 

[GTL]

I would love to know how they respond to your email!

 

[nleahcim]

Nothing but silence from Bose.

They have permanently lost at least one customer. I'll do my best to make sure I'm not the only one.

 

[Ishcabible]

Nice.
I heard they had a wonderful customer service a while ago though. That was one of the reasons my dad bought their computer speakers.

 

[synaesthetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by m0ofassa /img/forum/go_quote.gif You know how much I dislike spinning minor characters, right?

Don't hate on the Small Boss now.