This time of year is full of commercial transactions, which inevitably means a high chance for customer service fail.

Most things went smoothly for me this year, and a couple really good ones I wanted to point out.

First was amazon.com. One package was to be delivered some days ago. It went by FedEx SmartPost. The tracking said it should have been here by now, but wasn’t. USPS tracking only said “we’ve received shipment information”. I called Amazon’s customer service because the items were gifts for the kids and I wanted them to be here in time. A very friendly and helpful gentleman named Pat handled my call. He listened to everything, looked things up, and when the tracking numbers all were a bust he said he’d call me back. When he did he said he tracked as much as he could to try to find things but no luck and no one has any idea where the package is. So since it was vital for Christmas, he sent out another shipment UPS 2nd Day Air. I thought that was cool. I didn’t have to ask, there was no prompting, he realized the greater problem: making kids happy on Christmas morning, and worked to solve it. That’s a big win, and one reason why so far I continue to enjoy shopping with Amazon.

Second is Bonny Doon Vineyard. I ordered some wine to be shipped as a gift. Due to the fact it’s wine it really should be shipped quickly, at least 2-day air. Well, one of the shipments is going to a location not too far from the Vineyard, so within a few hours of placing my order I was contacted by someone at the vineyard saying they could change my order to standard Ground shipping, it’d still be there in time, and cost me less. Hey that’s cool! Looking out for your customers like that is really nice.

We’re all quick to point out when things suck. We should also be so quick to point out when things do right and well.