leyton.org

My trusty Garmin 305 died a sudden and unexpected death earlier this month. After a great run with my running club, I sync’d up, and forgot about it. When I next went to go running, it didn’t respond, despite trying the reset buttons, and even letting it sit about for days trying to drain the battery.

No amount of button pushing, plugging in to other computers, or anything, would get my beloved little gadget working again. With our wedding rapidly approaching, I figured I’d have to deal with it when I returned from our holiday. Despite it being still in guarantee, I was really envisaging a lengthy returns process, so wasn’t looking forward to the prospect.

I’d bought the device from Wiggle.co.uk last year, so went to their returns page, printed out the appropriate forms, and posted the garmin as carefully wrapped as I could manage having misplaced the original internal packaging (but not the box). Posted it off yesterday afternoon, and resigned myself to a good few weeks without my device.

Suffice to say I was taken aback to receive a couple of e-mails from Wiggle customer service saying they’d received it (well done The Post Office for getting it there within 24 hours), and were refunding my postage costs, and - the shock of it all - posting out a brand new Garmin 305 that same day. Less than 24 hours after I’d posted it! Somewhat taken aback, I e-mailed Customer Services expressing my surprise, and they responded:

We do try and deal with returned items as quickly as possible and try and avoid where possible having to involve the suppliers. Your new Garmin should be delivered to you tomorrow.

Wow. They’ve got themselves one very happy customer as a result of that. Sure, it’s a fault with the product that’s still in guarantee, but I’m still delighted by the rapid turnaround and honest response. They could have involved manufacturers, taken a long time to process the returned item, and so on. But in choosing to be proactive, they’ve not only taken away the hassle of my dealing with the manufacturer (although I’ve heard very good things about Garmin’s repairs process), I’m left with an abundant amount of good will (so much so I’m writing this) for this company and its efforts.

I’m also in need of some new road running shoes and socks, and have lined up a basket of goodies on their website to buy in the not too distant future. So customer loyalty is ensured. Certainly, some other companies I’ve dealt with might want to take some notes…