The Haggler: Advice to Customer Service: Don’t Blame the Computer

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The Haggler: Seeking Vital Signs in a Lifetime Warranty

Nobody actually uses the words “blah, blah, blah,” by the way. That would be silly. But not as silly as asking the Haggler to intervene when a warranty has expired. That is very silly. If you, dear consumer, agree that your TV — or computer or dishwasher or whatever — is covered for three years, please do not get in touch four years after the purchase.

A product is either covered or not. And if it has a lifetime warranty, it most likely is covered. Unless, for some strange reason, it’s not.

Q. The waterproof lining on the inside of a backpack made by a company called Eagle Creek became sticky. The company offers lifetime warranties on workmanship and materials — the bag was bought in 1999, and used once or twice a year — so I e-mailed and asked for a solution or a replacement.

A customer service rep wrote back to say I was out of luck because “this stickiness is a result of the breakdown of the fabric over time.” My backpack, the rep explained, had reached the end of its life. Put another way, it had died, and a dead backpack is no longer eligible for the protections of a lifetime warranty.

Huh? When I protested, I was told that I could mail the backpack to the warranty department and hope for a different answer. I did, but that department gave me the same response.

Care to give this a shot?

MARGARET JAHRLING

Redmond, Wash.

A. The Haggler has never thought about a lifetime warranty in such literal terms. But Eagle Creek’s logic makes its own insane sense. It could be summed up as: “Enjoy our lifetime warranty. Until your product dies. Then leave us alone.”

The tricky part of analogizing between humans and inanimate objects is that it’s far easier to tell when humans have expired. What constitutes a dead backpack? What if your backpack is just, you know, asleep? Or unconscious?

That Eagle Creek thinks the list of dead-backpack symptoms includes sticky linings seems a little — what’s the right word here? — fatalistic. It’s a bit like a doctor deciding that people are goners if they catch a cold. But here is what an Eagle Creek rep named Sadie Schroeder told Ms. Jahrling, in an e-mail:

“Our warranty protects against defect for the life of the product. Our warranty department has deemed that items that are breaking down due to age have reached the end of their life and will not be covered by warranty.”

In another e-mail, Ms. Schroeder said of the sticky lining malady, “There is no real cure for it.”

Anyone know the last rites for a backpack?

The Haggler read all this and detected the potential for a conflict of interest. Eagle Creek offers a lifetime warranty and then gets to decide when its products have flatlined, which saves the company money on resuscitation efforts.

So the Haggler wrote to the company, which is based in Carlsbad, Calif., and sells a wide variety of travel pillows, money belts and luggage, all with the adventure traveler in mind. In late August, the company president, Roger Spatz, agreed to chat on the phone.

“It’s not often that we have these issues,” he said, early in the conversation. “Situations like this are a very small percentage of the total.”

Understood, said the Haggler, eager to get to specifics.

What about a seven-year-old backpack with a rusted zipper and a bad case of dropsy?

“I don’t know,” Mr. Spatz said, after a pause. “If we’re going to get into a list, I’m not the person qualified to give you an answer.”

What about a 12-year-old rolling bag with a frayed pocket and a touch of gout?

“I don’t know what to tell you there,” he said. “We’d have to take a look at it and see.”

The Haggler was going to ask about a five-year-old tote with some torn mesh and a social disease, but it seemed pointless. Mr. Spatz noted that Ms. Jahrling was offered the chance to buy any Eagle Creek product at 50 percent off, and he underscored that the company worked diligently to please its customers.

That actually rings true. The Haggler finds little negative static about Eagle Creek on the Internet. We are most likely talking here about a rare and relatively isolated incident. But to his credit, Mr. Spatz grasped that errors were made in Ms. Jahrling’s case.

“What I object to most is that she was told. ‘If you want to send your bag to the warranty department, maybe they’ll give you a different answer,’ ” he said. “I will take this opportunity to make sure that we’re having proper conversations with our customers.”

He also hinted that Eagle Creek was willing to do more for Ms. Jahrling. “We’re going to go back and take care of this situation,” he said.

The Haggler ended that conversation heartened and anticipating an e-mail from Ms. Jahrling with some good news. But that was more than three weeks ago and as of Friday, no one from Eagle Creek had been in touch with her. Maybe the company isn’t quite as customer-
focused as it believes. Or maybe its phone and e-mail systems are currently in the hospital.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: A Right Way to Be Wrong

Nonetheless, the Haggler is about to make the point again, this time — a first — courtesy of an institution of higher learning.

Q. In 2011, I transferred from LaGuardia Community College into Baruch College in Manhattan. Even though I have been a New York City resident my entire life, Baruch classified me as an out-of-stater and for the past two years has been charging me about 50 percent more for tuition than it should.

To its credit, the school caught the mistake and sent a letter telling me so. Officials explained that I’d be charged in-state rates going forward, but said nothing about a refund for the more than $7,000 in overcharges. So I visited the admissions office.

Why this was necessary is a mystery. The school had already concluded that I’m a longtime New Yorker, and it had proof in the form of my transcript from the Kew-Forest School in Queens. But I visited anyway, with my driver’s license and a car insurance document. A woman behind the counter expressed some doubt about whether I’d get a refund — something like, “Normally, if you paid, you don’t get the money back.”

Then I was instructed to file an appeal, with photocopies of my driver’s license and my voter registration card. I dutifully mailed that in recently, but I have the distinct impression that the school is using everything in its bureaucratic toolbox to hold on to my money.

Maybe the Haggler can expedite this process, if it is a process, as opposed to a dead end that only looks like a process.

MATTHEW LEVY

Manhattan

A. Let us say at the outset that it’s possible that Baruch College would eventually have sent Mr. Levy a refund. It’s even possible that the school was going to send that refund soon. We’ll never know. Mr. Levy wrote to the Haggler the same day he mailed in his appeal.

But one can understand why he concluded that the school was, at minimum, reluctant to part with his $7,000. It had all the proof it needed to know that charging him out-of-state rates was wrong, and that proof — his high school transcript — seems more compelling than either a driver’s license or a voter registration card. Either of those can be obtained by just about anyone who has moved to New York State.

All right, not everyone. The state’s Board of Elections says that to qualify for a voter registration card, you must live at your present New York address for 30 days, not be in prison, or on parole for a felony conviction and not be adjudged mentally incompetent by a court. Given that Mr. Levy has a voter registration card, we can probably assume that he is not criminally insane. Or rather, that he is neither an ex-con nor insane.

But big deal. Many people are neither nuts, nor onetime criminals. In fact, some of the Haggler’s best friends are neither nuts, nor onetime criminals. The compelling proof of residency here is not Mr. Levy’s sanity or lack of a felony past. It’s his attendance at Kew-Forest, and one presumes that his performance at that institution helped persuade the admissions office at Baruch to admit him.

So why was Baruch hassling Mr. Levy for documentation that he really didn’t need to produce? The school’s position seems a classic example of “We screwed up. What are you going to do about it?” Highly annoying.

The Haggler contacted Christina Latouf, a spokeswoman for the college. She needed a day or two to figure out what had happened, and then she wrote something rather remarkable. In an e-mail, she said that the school not only took responsibility for stumbling blocks inserted between Mr. Levy and his refund, but also that changes would be made so that such errors don’t happen again. Those changes include working with the City University of New York — of which Baruch is part — to review out-of-state designations.

“Further, if a student’s initial documentation indicates they have always been a New York State resident, we will no longer request additional documentation,” Ms. Latouf wrote.

Do you hear that, dear readers? It is the sweet sound of modest reform, a noise as rare as the quack of the Scaly Sided Merganser. (It’s a very scarce duck, according to the Internet, and the Haggler has no idea if it quacks. But you get the point.) The pleasures of consumer interventions in this space usually come in single servings — like those pudding containers that you ate in grade school. But Baruch is actually going to change its system.

“At the heart of this case was an incorrect coding designation,” Ms. Latouf wrote, in conclusion. “While we have put some measures in place (such as the one that triggered our initial outreach to Matthew), we will build and utilize new technologies to put more safeguards in place, and train staff to assure coding is accurate.”

True, soothing and conciliatory words are cheap. But Baruch is off to a good start. Two days after the Haggler called, the school contacted Mr. Levy, and that same afternoon he e-mailed the Haggler a photograph of a document waiting for him at the bursar’s office: a check for $7,245.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: In Search of Romance, and Maybe a Refund

SOMEHOW, in the four-tenths of a decade that the Haggler has been aiding consumers, no one with dating-service issues has written in. Until now.

Q. I’m an attractive, successful, busy and single mother of three, and dating stinks. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to sign up with It’s Just Lunch, a widely advertised matchmaking service. But it’s been a disaster.

I paid $1,000 for a three-month membership, during which the service was to set up dates from its database, take feedback from each person after the fact and use it to refine selections for subsequent rendezvous.

My first date didn’t really count as a date because the guy never showed. I was then set up with someone else, but we had zero chemistry. After your first date, according to company policy, you have a face-to-face meeting with a staff member. I was looking forward to visiting what I assumed was I.J.L.’s Midtown offices, and drove from Westchester County to Manhattan in the middle of a workday to meet Thelma. (For some reason, you rarely learn the last names of I.J.L.’s employees.) When I arrived at the given address, it was a bar on West 40th Street.

Thelma asked me a bunch of profile questions, which I had already answered for employees who were known to me as Catherine and Jeff.

In the month that followed, little has happened, other than frustrating efforts to e-mail and call company representatives. When I finally did reach someone — Debbie — she agreed that my experience had been subpar, and in an effort to appease me, extended my membership for another month and sent me a $25 gift card. But the card had no funds loaded on it. You expect some rejection when you sign up with a dating service, but hearing “Sorry, this isn’t working” from a CVS employee — I didn’t see that coming.

I’ve asked to have my money refunded. I’ve also asked to have another date set up. So far, I have gotten nowhere.

Can you help?

L.M.

A. You can find a fair number of online complaints about It’s Just Lunch, but how surprising is that? It’s hard to imagine a business with a more high-maintenance clientele than lonely, upmarket singles.

“May you inherit a high-end dating service for U.S. professionals!” — to the Haggler’s ears, that sounds like a pretty good curse.

But It’s Just Lunch, at least in this case, seems to have taken a supremely challenging job and botched it big time. What’s troubling here is not the failed dates, though they aren’t exactly flattering given that fixing people up is what the company does. More vexing are the faulty lines of communication, which led L.M. to speak to seven different company reps over the course of two months. And those conversations usually happened after she had called or e-mailed two or three times.

Is that a failure on It’s Just Lunch’s part? No, said the company’s president, Melissa Brown, who e-mailed the Haggler from the company’s headquarters in Palm Desert, Calif. “We believe it is important to point out that our clients are not assigned to just one dating director,” she wrote, “but instead we work as a team.”

That notion is hard to square with a “Welcome to It’s Just Lunch” e-mail that L.M. received soon after she signed up with the service in May. “My name is Jeff, and I will be working with you on all of your dates from this point forward,” Jeff wrote.

Which is it, people? A team? Or Jeff? You can’t blame the customer for assuming that it was the latter.

After looking into L.M.’s file, Ms. Brown decided “there was some miscommunication that happened on our end,” which she described as “not typical” for a client.

“We strive to provide a level of service to our clients,” she wrote, “and any time this threshold is not met or exceeded, we will rectify the situation.”

The Haggler notes that Ms. Brown said nothing about a “high” level of service, or a “reasonably decent” level of service. Just a level of service. Which means that there’s no telling where the company sets the bar. You get a sense, though, from what happened next.

To rectify this situation, It’s Just Lunch e-mailed L.M. to say it would issue a refund. But not a full refund. L.M. didn’t realize it at the time — it was part of terms and conditions she apparently didn’t read — but she had signed up for a membership that provided her with three dates or three months of service, whichever came second. Because L.M. had been on one date, she would be sent a check for two-thirds of her $1,000, or precisely $666.67.

Yes, the company rounded up. Sending a check for $666.66 — hey, that would have seemed a little stinting.

Pardon the snark. But the Haggler can’t help himself, mostly since this entertainingly precise refund had a string attached. Actually, “string” is the wrong word. It was more like a whoopee cushion because it was so ridiculous.

A “refund settlement agreement” for L.M.’s signature was e-mailed to her last week, requiring that she “refrain from making any statements, public or private, written or oral, which are derogatory or critical or may discredit, malign, or disparage the releasee’s reputation or business.” Publishing such statements in a newspaper was expressly prohibited in the next sentence.

L.M. naturally refused to sign this contract, causing It’s Just Lunch to modify it to exclude e-mails she’d already sent to the Haggler. That’s a step in the right direction, though she hasn’t signed that document, either, because she reserves the right to discuss it. The Haggler understands. He, too, would think twice about setting up any single friends with It’s Just Lunch. Forget about dates. The company can’t even handle a breakup.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: At Quicken Loans, a Culture Geared to Customer Service

REMEMBER the recent column about DailyCandy, the e-mail service for discount deals, and the customer who sent e-mails for six maddening months, trying to get an $85 refund?

Well, after the matter was thoroughly investigated, we learned that an employee at Group Commerce, which handles DailyCandy’s order fulfillment, had marked the refund as paid, even though it wasn’t.

This explanation, of course, explains very little. What we still want to know is why so many companies, in similar circumstances, fail to deliver. Time and again, you get the sense that these companies are filled with employees who are trained to keep their heads down and keep stamping. Or perhaps communication has broken down. Or it’s always someone else’s job.

How did so much customer service become so wretched? It’s a mystery that hangs over nearly every one of these columns.

Not long ago, the Haggler got an idea of what is going wrong after a close look at a company that is getting it right. It was during a trip to Detroit where the Haggler — or, rather, his duller, windier alter ego — reported a story about Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans, a privately held mortgage lender. The article looked at Mr. Gilbert’s efforts to revive downtown Detroit, but while there, the Haggler got a close look at a company that has thought seriously about how to keep customers happy.

The thinking has paid off. Quicken Loans was rated highest in customer satisfaction among mortgage originators in 2010, 2011 and 2012, according to J. D. Power & Associates. The company has also been ranked in the top 30 of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 10 consecutive years.

What is Quicken Loans doing to earn such accolades? It boils down to culture.

Mr. Gilbert and Bill Emerson, the chief executive, spend a lot of time and energy instilling a very particular work ethos into employees. For newcomers, this involves a daylong speech/indoctrination led by Mr. Gilbert, who, on the day the Haggler caught his act, spoke for eight hours, with a break for lunch, wearing a clip-on red bow tie. (Presenting the serious in the guise of the slightly comic, with plenty of punch lines, turns out to be one of his specialties.) The speech occurs once every five weeks or so and is delivered to recent hires, usually in a conference room of a hotel.

You can learn a lot about Quicken Loans from this presentation, which revolves around the company’s “isms,” a set of pithy summations of principles. Some, like “Responding with a sense of urgency is the ante to play,” are self-explanatory. Others, like “Every client. Every time. No exceptions. No excuses,” come with their own wittily phrased elaborations. (“Clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”)

And many, like “We’ll figure it out,” make sense only with elucidation: “Not everything comes with a set of instructions. The innovators of the world are often exploring uncharted territory.”

Let’s stipulate that none of these ideas are blazingly original, and some are so obvious that one wonders why it’s necessary to say them aloud. (“It’s not about who is right, it’s about what is right.”) But what Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Emerson have done is create a set of expectations as well as a sense of community and mission. Employees at Quicken Loans have it hammered into them: care about the customer, sweat every detail, improvise when you need to, always deliver.

These employees are also encouraged to enjoy their jobs; they work in an atmosphere so buoyant that the Haggler was not surprised to find a karaoke machine in a room filled with a few hundred mortgage bankers.

“If you don’t create a culture at your company, a culture will create itself,” Mr. Emerson said in a phone interview. “And it won’t be good. I sometimes hear people say ‘We don’t have a culture at our company.’ They have one. But if it hasn’t been nurtured, if no one has spent on any time on it, you can assume it’s the wrong culture.”

THE Haggler can think of a dozen problems brought to this column that it’s hard to imagine could have emerged from Quicken Loans. And here is just one small piece of evidence:

A few weeks back, when the Haggler was trying to get the attention of DailyCandy, he turned to Twitter. Using his Haggler account, he sent a post into the ether, asking someone at DailyCandy for a call. No one ever replied.

Last month, the same experiment was tried with Quicken Loans, though the Haggler raised the degree of difficulty a little. A post was sent from a Twitter account opened by the Haggler with a name that was not the Haggler’s — or that of anyone he knows. The post had no hashtag and was not sent to Quicken Loans’ Twitter account. The message read:

“I am not happy with Quicken Loans! And you can tell because I used an exclamation point.”

A response arrived within hours. “How can I help?” wrote a Quicken Loans employee, identified as Bianca. “Please send me an e-mail,” she added, providing her e-mail address.

This turned out to be Bianca Mutti, part of a team that monitors the Twittersphere for Quicken Loans-related comments. The Haggler sent her an e-mail last week, from his Haggler e-mail account, and explained: “That tweet was a test. And you passed.”

“Thanks for solving this mystery for us!” she wrote back. “I mean it, and you can tell because I used an exclamation point.”

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: Tracking a Child Support Mix-Up In New York

There are surveys that cover just about every aspect of air travel: rates of on-time departures, rankings of frequent-flier programs, and on and on. But the Haggler has never seen a study that shows which airlines regard fliers as the biggest idiots.

Huge omission, right? And until a thorough inquiry is undertaken, the Haggler contends that US Airways takes the dimmest view of its customers’ intelligence. On what evidence is that conclusion based? When you call the airline’s reservation number, the first utterance you hear after you shimmy up the phone tree and await a representative is this:

“Note that under federal law, passengers are prohibited from bringing hazardous materials on the aircraft.”

Is there a sentient human on this planet who is unaware that bringing hazmat on a jet is verboten? Is it not self-evident that loading up your baggage with potentially lethal, flammable and/or toxic chemicals is uncool, not to mention illegal?

The most charitable explanation here is that US Airways is just trying to kill some time by filling your ears with factoids, as you stew on hold. But being called a dummy, by implication, doesn’t make the stewing more pleasant. Quite the opposite. Why not just remind us to wear clothing to the airport? Or to walk upright?

The Haggler posed these questions to US Airways, mostly because he can. A spokesman, John McDonald, wrote back and noted that a lot of passengers have no idea how many everyday items are considered hazmat by the Federal Aviation Administration. He listed some: spare curling-iron gas cartridges, dry ice in an airtight container, a can of aerosol spray starch, loaded firearms.

The loaded firearms — not really a surprise. But the others are.

“Our friendly little reminder on the start of the call,” Mr. McDonald wrote, “is just to pique interest, as it did with you, to ask the question: What is hazmat?”

Respectfully, as an interest piquer, the “little reminder” stinks. So here’s some free advice: Bag the little reminder and give callers a list of the surprising items that are banned. Or list eight items that might be hazmat and challenge callers to pick out the one that isn’t.

“Great idea,” wrote Mr. McDonald, effectively neutralizing the Haggler with cheap praise. “I’ll pass it along to our reservations team.”

Problem all but solved.

Question: Is there any way to improve the world that is too trivial for the Haggler?

Apparently not!

Enough of this folderol. It’s question time.

Q. I am a single mother, and my case does not involve bad corporate customer service but rather the seemingly impenetrable New York City Office of Child Support Enforcement that has for months now miscalculated the child support arrears owed by my daughter’s father.

An order was issued by family court on Nov. 30, 2012, specifying that the support collection unit of the O.C.S.E. was to assess the father’s arrears at $12,568 plus the previously calculated arrears, which were $7,439. Instead of adding the new arrears to the old, as instructed by the court order, the O.C.S.E. substituted the new arrears of $12,568 for the previously calculated arrears of $7,439. An amended order was issued on Jan. 8, 2013, in an attempt to be clearer for the O.C.S.E.’s employees.

The amended order came only after I spent five hours speaking with eight different people in two different buildings.

But the new order didn’t help. Yet again, the O.C.S.E. simply substituted the new arrears of $12,568 for the previously calculated arrears of $7,439.

I have spent the past four months doing everything within my power to rectify this situation, and I have failed. If I were to seek legal counsel to help me, I’d be spending thousands of dollars to try to get a state bureaucracy to do its job enforcing a court order. The $7,439 that I am trying to get would be spent in legal fees.

If you would consider trying to intervene on my behalf, I would be more grateful than you could know.

L.G.

New York

A. The Haggler has spent little time dealing with the public sector, so he sent an e-mail to Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate. Mr. de Blasio, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor, runs an office that mediates between the electorate and the city government. He handed off this matter to a staff member, Phil Walzak, who brought in the office’s director of constituent services, America Canas.

The pair went at this for several weeks. On April 23, Mr. Walzak wrote to say, “Still gathering the details on this case, but my constituent services person says the case outcome is actually positive.”

The Haggler spoke to Mr. Walzak and Ms. Canas a few days later, and they were low on details about what exactly went wrong at the Human Resources Administration, home of the O.C.S.E.

“Why it got screwed up at the front end, we don’t know,” Mr. Walzak said.

“A little bit of a missed communication,” Ms. Canas speculated, “and a lot of emotion.”

The leaders at the Human Resources Administration did not offer much more illumination. A spokeswoman, Carmen Boon, initially suggested that this entire matter was fed to the Haggler by the public advocate’s office, presumably to make that office seem like heroes. (Untrue.) Then she e-mailed a statement.

“This is a very rare instance in which an unconventional court order lacking proper terminology and not identifying a specific dollar amount to add back to the arrears balance caused confusion among our staff,” Ms. Boon wrote. “Once the issues with the order were detected, H.R.A. worked as quickly as possible to update the amounts owed and fix this unfortunate situation.”

It would nice to file this entire affair under the category of “learning experience.” But nobody here seems to have learned anything. Other than the Haggler, who learned that he much prefers dealing with the private sector, where blame-pinning is invariably far easier.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: A Voucher Deal That Wasn’t So Sweet

Two weeks ago, she wrote this: “I wanted to let you know that the new refrigerator was delivered on Tuesday. And it sounds like a normal fridge! Also, I put a bag of lettuce toward the back of the fridge and it didn’t freeze.”

Progress, indeed. She thanked the Haggler. The Haggler thanks Whirlpool. And we’re off on a new adventure.

Q. In October 2011, I purchased a voucher through DailyCandy — an e-mail service for discount deals — for a pair of custom-made jeans that cost $85. The voucher was good until October of the following year.

In the spring of 2012, I tried to trade the voucher for the jeans and learned that the supplier, a company called Indi, had gone out of business. I contacted DailyCandy and was told to expect a refund in six to eight weeks.

In July, I called again, and was told there was a backlog. They apologized, and said a check would be sent in six to eight weeks.

In September, I was told a check would be sent in seven to 10 days.

In December, a woman named Deandra transferred me to a manager named Brian, who told me that the process for a refund had to go through an internal ticket system and be approved by the accounting department.

In January, I was informed that my account showed that a refund had been processed. Wrong. A woman said to call in two to six weeks if I hadn’t received a check.

There were three more calls in March, and several promises to “escalate” the matter. And another apology.

I am losing hope that I will ever see my money. Maybe you can help.

BARBARA HARRINGTON

Hightstown, N.J.

A. The DailyCandy Web site posts no news media contact number or e-mail address. So the Haggler opened a Twitter account and posted a cry for help. “Hey DailyCandy: trying to reach you about an unhappy customer. Would you be kind enough to get in touch with me? Pretty please?”

The Haggler’s first and so far only tweet. And a total flop. Many companies scan the Twittersphere for mentions, both positive and negative, but DailyCandy is apparently not one of them.

As it happens, though, the company is based here in New York City, in SoHo. So a few weeks ago, the Haggler just dropped by. It’s a chic little operation, or looked so from the reception area, where the Haggler waited until a guy who had clearly stepped off the set of “Gossip Girl” came by and said a public relations rep was on her way. That was Kimberly Soward, who said a vice president for communications would be in touch. The Haggler gave her his number and headed for the elevator.

Soon the Haggler was on the phone with Lenore Moritz.

“Ultimately, this customer fell through the cracks,” she said.

But where exactly were the cracks she had fallen through? Ms. Moritz said that DailyCandy, which is part of NBCUniversal, uses a third party to execute orders, a company called Group Commerce. It turns out that Group Commerce is based about two blocks from DailyCandy. An e-mail sent there eventually led to a phone call with the company’s C.E.O., Jonty Kelt.

“We handle e-commerce for a lot of brands,” said Mr. Kelt, who is a native of New Zealand and has that country’s disarming accent. Everyone from New Zealand sounds hearty and pleasant, for some reason.

While Group Commerce handles millions of dollars’ worth of orders, Mr. Kelt went on, it actually hires a third party to process refunds. That’s right. DailyCandy outsources its orders to Group Commerce and Group Commerce outsources refunds to 24-7 Intouch, a company based in Winnipeg, Canada.

It’s getting easier to see how someone could fall through the cracks, isn’t it?

The Haggler was going to call 24-7 Intouch, but Mr. Kelt said that the error was in his shop.

“Our finance department, when they cut a check, they have to mark a refund as processed,” he said. “It appears that in this case it was marked as processed, and upon further investigation it was discovered that the check was never created or banked.”

HOW did that happen? How did Ms. Harrington’s check appear to have been sent when it wasn’t?

Mr. Kelt said he had looked into the matter, and he couldn’t be definitive about what exactly had led to this error. He added that Ms. Harrington’s experience was “an outlier” and that Group Commerce and 24-7 Intouch handled thousands of refunds every year without any hitches.

Well, that’s nice. And, of course, any system can break down now and then. What’s troubling here is that Group Commerce couldn’t rectify a mistake after more than a full year of inquiries by a customer. People kept politely taking her calls and whatever error was made in her case could not be undone.

The Haggler sees this over and over: Customer service that can’t handle exceptions, even exceptions that are the result of internal boo-boos. Mr. Kelt called this set of events “regrettable.” If the Haggler were in his shoes, he would have gone a little further and contacted Ms. Harrington to apologize.

Mr. Kelt didn’t. But Group Commerce did send a refund.

“Pull out the noisemakers and let’s party!” Ms. Harrington wrote two weeks ago, about a year and a half after her refund campaign began. “A check was in my mailbox tonight.”

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: Companies That Get Customer Service Right

EVERY few weeks, the Haggler receives e-mail from happy customers eager to praise companies that have treated them well. Given the howls of dismay and fury that typically fill the Haggler’s in-box, these letters are startling and exotic — like finding a yogi in a mosh pit. When enough unsolicited huzzahs pile up, the Haggler likes to present them in a column.

Why? Because the Haggler’s never-ending quest for an improved, more responsive service economy includes the occasional round of applause for companies that get it right.

And further, if all you knew about the consumer experience in this country was learned from this column, you’d never leave the house. Or answer the phone, or order anything online. Which is a highly skewed portrait.

So with that preamble, the Haggler steps aside and hands the microphone to a species that is rarely spotted in this space: the satisfied customer.

Recently, our three-year-old Cuisinart coffee maker started making noises akin to a strangled parrot, and then ended its life with a theatrical puff of smoke, like a magician’s finale. When contacted about this, Cuisinart — which is owned by the Conair Corporation — immediately shipped us a newer and better machine, even though ours was long out of warranty. The company also provided a box to ship the old one back, presumably for an autopsy.

The whole process took less than five days. Well done, Conair. You have a customer for life.

CRAIG STUART-PAUL, Catonsville, Md.

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Several months ago I bought one of those LED light bulbs that are supposed to last a couple of decades. It was a Philips that cost nearly $40 and I expected it to outlast me.

It died after five months. To my surprise, when I called to complain, Philips offered to refund the purchase price plus the sales tax. They asked only that I return the dead bulb, presumably so they could determine why it failed. A couple weeks later, a check for $40 came in the mail, along with a prepaid label for me to return the bulb.

Very impressive.

BILL FARREN, Monroe, Conn.

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You are sort of the Miss Lonelyhearts of the retail world. So, I thought you might like to know that I just bought a ton of stuff from West Elm and it all went flawlessly. I talked to human beings — not answering machines — several of whom called me to arrange delivery times and inform me that back-ordered items had arrived. I thought this might brighten your day a bit.

NANCY LEROY, Montclair, N.J.

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After about five years of faithful service, my TiVo digital video recorder died. The company offered a good price on a replacement if I sent back the dead unit, which I did. However, I neglected to remove the cable card before I shipped the unit. I didn’t realize my error until the new unit arrived.

I sent an e-mail to TiVo, asking if there was any way they might be able to locate my cable card and send it back. They wrote right away and said they would contact the warehouse, but that it might be difficult.

Lo and behold, a week later a package arrived with my cable card, saving me $75 to replace it and earning TiVo my everlasting customer loyalty. This is the way to run a business and retain customers.

PAUL C. MENDELOWITZ, Park Ridge, N.J.

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My husband recently took a flight from Appleton, Wis., to Eugene, Ore., a trip that included a stop in Portland. The Portland-to-Eugene leg was canceled, so he rented a car in Portland and drove to the Eugene airport. He arrived right around 3:30, which was great because that is when I was supposed to pick him up.

We contacted Delta Air Lines and it responded promptly, politely and apologetically and agreed to refund the unused Portland-Eugene ticket. It would not refund the $100 for the rental car and gas, but offered a $100 gift card from a small selection of companies. My husband went with L. L. Bean.

Given what I read in your column, this all seemed amazing.

ELLEN JOHNSON, North Bend, Ore.

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A U.P.S. driver came to my door with a prepaid label to pick up a baby monitor being returned to Amazon. He accidentally took the wrong box, which contained a rather expensive espresso machine, on its way back to Nespresso for repair, sending it to Amazon instead.

One call to customer service and Amazon found a quick way to handle the problem. The company let me pick a new espresso machine from its inventory, and sent it to me, at no cost.

I’ve always loved Amazon. Now I love it even more.

MORRIS TABUSH, Brooklyn

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I bought a General Electric microwave last summer and upon opening the box found that the clear plastic overlay on the control panel was wrinkled and bubbled. This made it hard to read the symbols on the panel. I thought that I could live with this, but it just got more annoying over time.

I decided to call G.E. customer relations with the expectation that I would probably have to ship it back, at considerable cost. The G.E. representative was pleasant and she asked me to remove the serial number label and to send it to her. “We will send you a refund,” she then said. A check arrived soon after.

DAVID SEGAL, Philadelphia

(The writer, whose name really is David Segal, is not related to the Haggler. But the Haggler still hopes that he will immediately cease and desist from using the name. Please, let’s keep the lawyers out of this.)

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See? Some companies know how to cultivate loyalty. The Haggler salutes them. Really. And now, having finished that salute, this column will return to its regular programming, which is delivering the written equivalent of a Dutch rub to any consumer-abusing chuckleheads that need one.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.