an easily impressed/placated consumer. Which makes me wonder why my list of businesses that I'm very happy with is so short. So far they include:
Bare Bones Software
Road Tools
Waterfield Bags
Brando Workshop
Bare Bones, creators of the insanely great BBEdit HTML/text editor ("It doesn't suck."®), wow'd me by notifying me of a feature I had asked them about months and months before. This was no mass email about a new upgrade, this was a direct "Hey, remember that feature you were asking about awhile ago? Guess what, we got it now." email.
Then there was Road Tools, with their CoolPad and PodiumPad. Must haves for laptop users IMO (unless you actually have them in your lap all the time). They sent me an entirely new pad along with a sheet of extra rubber feet for FREE when all I had emailed them about was whether or not I could purchase some rubber feet to replace those that had come unglued after years of use.
Waterfield impresses me with their absurdly well made Cargo bags. After 6 years of use the damn thing still looked like new. Back then, customer service was handled directly by the founder, Gary and he was always informative and polite. Nowadays they have others handling general email duty but it appears Gary still sends out thank you/your order has shipped emails. And the fact that they're willing to customize the bag for my quasi-left-handedness got them pluses in my book too.
And the latest addition to my list is Brando Workshop who I've purchased from numerous times now. Any time a gadget has an LCD that needs protecting, I get one of their UltraClear protectors. Possibly the best and easiest to use protector I've ever come across. I recently got a protector for a 5D and in the process of putting it on I was disappointed because they were smaller than the actual LCD area. So I shot off an email to them to let them know that their 5D ones were about a millimeter too small and their response was apologetic and they offered to send me a new one. Yay, more free stuff! ;-p Even more surprising to me because Brando is based in Hong Kong, and HK businesses aren't exactly known to be very people friendly. But maybe things have changed since last I've been there.
Looking at the list it appears that I enjoy shopping with smaller, privately-owned companies. They provide a much better and more personalized all-around consumer experience. I guess you pretty much pay for it with higher prices but if you're not scraping the bottom of your wallet to do so, why not?
One larger company that is on the brink of making this list is Newegg. Their online chat customer service is very useful and very good and their customer service agents are pretty liberal in making up for any perceived difficulties in fulfilling your order. Thus far I've gotten free upgraded shipping and some discounts from them over ordering issues. My boss accidentally bought an OEM mobo instead of a retail one and when he called to tell them about his mistake, they just told him to keep the OEM one and sent him the retail one without charging extra for it! It wasn't even their fault! Plus you can find some pretty good deals with them. The reason they're not currently on the list is because their Preferred Account functionality has issues if you're ordering stuff that ships from multiple warehouses. I had to place an order 5 times because of this and at the end it still didn't come out quite right. =p But otherwise they're a great place to go for computer, electronic and occasionally, photographic needs.
