Customer Service Case Histories

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Even after sending this fax, the fee appeared on his American Express bill. So Keefe wrote and called Delta, to no avail. At one point, he says, the airline even claimed the earlier flight had never been canceled—a "ludicrous and easily disproved claim," he says.

That's when Keefe wrote to American Express, thinking there was little they could do, but trusting the credit-card company based on positive previous experiences. It took six months of the company hounding Delta, but American Express finally retrieved the funds and refunded them to its cardholder's account. "What impressed me as much as Delta's hoodlum-like behavior was AmEx's willingness to be persistent," he says. Delta did not return calls seeking comment.

Keefe says these experiences will stay with him and reflect on his business with both companies. Still, there are limits: He's about to fly another trip on Delta because, he says, he "couldn't avoid it."

The Brookstone Shuffle?

Only a small number of readers in our customer service forum addressed retailers. We heard minor gripes about big-box behemoth Best Buy (BBY) and mixed opinions on department store Nordstrom (JWN), but most intriguing was a story from a reader who believes she may have been the victim of a bait-and-switch ploy by the mall fixture and gadgeteer, Brookstone.

After a full year of shopping for a new massage chair, Lakshmi Viswanath jumped on what looked like a great deal for a Panasonic Realpro Elite on Brookstone's Web site sometime around last Thanksgiving. The chair, which normally retails for $4,400, had been marked down to $3,400 for the holiday season. (The chair was discontinued, but that wasn't clear from the sale Brookstone was offering, Viswanath claims.) After placing an order online, she called the store closest to her home in a Dallas suburb to see if they had any chairs in stock that could be delivered sooner than the 5 to 10 days that was promised to her online. Viswanath was in luck: A store salesperson said he could have one of the chairs shipped in only a couple of days.

Viswanath claims that weeks went by and no chair arrived, though the same eager salesperson called periodically to assure her to keep waiting. One day she returned home from work to find three "frantic" voice mails from the Brookstone rep, informing her the store had sold out of the marked-down chair. Viswanath says she was told that if she was interested, they could offer her a refurbished model for $3,500 (the same price she had paid for the new model), or a better, and more expensive, Panasonic model for $4,700.

Viswanath felt twice-cheated and tried to take the matter up with store managers, district managers, and regional vice-presidents, to no avail. She says one district manager told her: "You can speak to the CEO for all I care, I don't think much is going to happen." After she requested a full refund, it took over two months—and a couple more phone calls—to get the $3,400 to reappear on her bank statement.

Brookstone spokesperson Robert Padgett admits that the company took more orders for that model chair than it had in stock. "We apologized for that," he says. But Padgett contends that the store representative broke the bad news to Viswanath within only a few days, and offered as consolation a $500 discount on a better model or the refurbished model for $2,999. Brookstone says a full refund was offered immediately following the mix-up, but that Viswanath declined an immediate refund.

Viswanath now refuses to shop at Brookstone. She believes the company made a big mistake by handling her the same way they would a customer who bought a $50 pillow. "There's a value you attach to a customer, and that value comes from what kind of purchase they are making," she says.

She and her boyfriend Amit are disappointed they missed the chance to buy a chair during discount season, but they're not deterred: The couple is thinking buying a similar Panasonic chair at another retailer for $4,700.

If you would like to share your customer service experiences, visit our ongoing forum on the Best and Worst Customer Service.

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MacMillan is a reporter at BusinessWeek.com in New York.