Great service from Metadot

[patrickgeekhack]

Those who have read my other thread know that I bought a keyboard from directcanada.com and the semicolon key was not on par with the other keys. I returned it to the seller where they said they did not see any problem and that I would be refunded the amount I paid for the keyboard minus shipping, minus 15% restocking fee.

I wrote to them saying that I was disappointed that they did not see the problem even though it was and is still there. The stupid person I had on the phone even said that when typing at a certain speed, it's normal for the keys to feel different. To that, I asked him why it's not the case with the other keys? He did not have an answer.

Anyway, I contacted Metadot, telling them that this is not the kind of service which does any good to their brand. They quickly replied, confirming that this is not the kind of experience they want people who buy their keyboards to have, and that if I had not agreed to the 15% restocking fee, they were willing to talk to the reseller.

I told them that I already shipped the keyboard back and agreed to the restocking fee because I did not think I had any other option.

And then came the best news of the day:

Thanks for the further information. We are very sorry for the experience you had. This is not up to our standards of a good customer experience, and for that reason we would like to make an exception (we do not usually ship internationally) and send you a keyboard... If you do not like the keyboard let us know, and we will send a UPS return label to bring it back.
 
Would you be interested in this? If so, please just provide your shipping address and the model of keyboard you want. I do want to mention that we are out of stock on the Professional and Ultimate "clicky" versions at this time, but we expect to have them available for shipping by September 20. The Silent versions could ship immediately.

[ricercar]

What a great customer service. Get the board you want.

[joker]

this is great. Now I am going to love my Das even more

[patrickgeekhack]

Great news for me indeed. I chose an Ultimate with blue Cherries.

[instantkamera]

very very VERY cool.

[wellington1869]

absolutely fantastic. There are so many sellers out there who could take some real lessons from metadot.

[jnsjr]

this is great news.  i'm glad that everything was resolved.  +1 for Metadot

[patrickgeekhack]

I'm glad that things worked out very well for me. I was not expecting anything from Metadot to be honest. The only reason I wrote to them was to let them know that their reseller in Canada was not doing a great job. Them offering me a free keyboard was just icing on the cake. But, it was a nice gesture from them. They knew that an unhappy customer would be bad for them. It we pause and think about it for a minute, it all makes sense.

Mechanical keyboard buyers are very few compared to all keyboard buyers, and usually the ones who bought one mechanical keyboard are the ones who come back to buy more. For example, most of us on geekhack.org like to have a mechanical keyboard on each of our home computers (some of us have more than one home computer), and a mechanical keyboard for our work computer. And in most cases, our workplace does not pay for the mechanical keyboard and will not pay $100 for a keyboard. Therefore, we buy our own keyboards for use at work. If was I unhappy wit a particular keyboard or its seller, I would not buy another one. Moreover, I would advised anyone who was thinking about getting that keyboard to think twice.

On the other hand, if I had very good service, especially in a case where they corrected a bad situation, they can be sure that not only would I recommend the keyboard to someone else, I would also mention the good customer service, which will a great selling point for the potential buyer.

In short, the chain reaction could be either positive or negative depending on the experience of one buyer.