Remington: Phenomenal Customer Service

I have HC600 hair clipper from Remington, bought through Amazon on July 2007. It’s a great machine, water proof, portable, durable, ease to handle, just great. Since it’s made for North America the charger is 120 Volts. I bought at Radio Shack a special converter, so I could charge the clipper when I moved to Europe.

On one of those days, near the Christmas holidays, I connected the charger directly to the 220 V outlet without the special converter. Yeah, after a couple of minutes I felt the smell and burned it became. This charger is not that easy to replace, since it uses a special plug to connect the charger to the clipper (See images below). So, what will any rational human being will do? Contact Remington and ask them how can you but or get one. However, we humans are irrational, therefore I did it the hard and expensive way. I tried to buy it from eBay or contact the manufactures of the charger (in Hong Kong), no success. Finally, I decided to buy a universal charger from a hardware local store, cut the end from the Remington charger and attached. (Now that I look back, I’m amused by how much unnecessary trouble I went through)

The connector of the charger to the clipper

With the hacked or like we called in Honduras “hechizo” charger, I faced a couple problems:

• Didn’t have the tools needed to determine which is positive and which is negative. So, I kind of guess and it didn’t burned the clipper, it was 50/50 probability.
• The capacity of the universal is 500 mA, compared to the original that is 1200 mA, there wasn’t enough to charge the clipper.

Before I bought the universal one, I decided to contact Remington. Their customer service  replied in a polite and fast manner. But for some reason I felt that this will go no where and ignored the email. I replied until I realized that my hacked version sucked and didn’t had another option. They came back to me the next day, telling me that my warranty was still valid and by sending the defective unit, they will send a new one.

After a couple of days I received a letter by mail with the steps, paid shipping and UPS label for sending the defective unit.  I packed it on a box including the cut tip that I attached to the hacked charger, with a note telling them reason of the cut cable. Still at this point, I doubted that I will receive the replacement because of the cut tip, however I didn’t have nothing to lose.

After a week I got a call from a UPS representative, they had a package for me and  they needed me to be home, because they didn’t have a place where to leave it. Finally, I received the package today (I had to rerouted to the company where I’m doing my thesis).

When I saw the package, it seem odd for such a big box for a charger. By the moment I picked it up to open it, I realized there was something else inside. After a minute It was confirmed, they sent me a complete set with hair clipper and charger. Of course, I look for any notes, message or even an invoice, it just felt to good to be true. What I found was  a friendly letter with the following message:

Dear Geries Handal,

We received your defective appliance HC600 E51 HP hair Clipper with your letter of 19.01.2009. In accordance with guarantee claim, please find enclosed a replacement appliance.

We hope that you will enjoy using this appliance for a long time to come and will choose the Remington brand in the future.

Pretty cool if you ask me, no stupid questions, no endless email conversations, no invoices, nothing, just great service from a company that builds great products.

To the left is the old one, to the right is the new one with the charger

Of course, I’m still pondering on why they sent the whole clipper. My guess is that they don’t have spare chargers sitting around, meaning that they will have to “strip” one out of a clipper and without charger it is useless. Also, it might more expensive to order a charger or to search for one on the local market ( interesting politics and logistics, if you think about it.) More important they know that a happy customers worth a lot, but a extremely happy customer is worth more and that is what they got. Therefore their “wishes”, of me choosing the Remington brand in the future, will come true. In the meantime I blog post will do.