A tale of two businesses

With so much competition out there for your business, it amazes me how little or how much some companies are willing to do to maintain business. Here are two extremes from the past week.

Snapfish

I ordered a Memory Book for my FIL for Father's Day. It didn't arrive. After 17 days of waiting I e-mailed and two days later received a note telling me to wait to do anything until it hadn't arrived after 14 business days from the order date. They actually do sell calendars.

The Memory Book arrives with a huge dent. After a week of negotiating (four e-mails because it takes a few days for them to respond to each one) I told them that I was taking my business elsewhere due to their "not going to budge solution". Their solution was that my FIL ship it back for their inspection, they would credit my account if indeed it was defective (no clue as to what happens if THEY didn't find it defective) and then I could remake and order a new Memory Book. I had a mini fit of sorts with statements about the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of dollars I had spent there over the years without ever filing a complaint and stated they would ship it back, they can credit my account, but then I was making and ordering it from someone else, thank you very much.

Even though this did prompt them into action, I may still start using Shutterfly because it just really should not have been that difficult.

Amazon.com

We ordered a hitch carrier since we now have very little room in the SUV for camping/travel gear now that the backseat is occupied by rugrats and the trunk by a big hairy black dog. Found out it was not going to arrive in time after all, refused delivery after the camping trip was completed since AB bought one at our local Joe's.

I noted it hadn't been credited back to my card (about 3 weeks later). I e-mailed Amazon yesterday. Got an e-mail back last night saying it was apparently lost in transit, they couldn't find it (I could feel the headache starting), but they went ahead and credited my card for $126 because the tracking did show I had refused delivery. (Headache spontaneously gone.)

Guess who wins my business for life?