Customer support begins before the sale is made

Last month I came to the idea that I wanted to give my parents a photo album (more precisely a hardcover book) as a present for Christmas. I already knew about iPhoto's print products, but I had some friends and members of my family who had told me about their good experiences with Hofmann Albums, and I decided to have a look at their website.

Customer support begins before the sale is made. Hofmann's software program runs only on windows. End of story for me. I am not going to run their software in an emulated environment such as VirtualPC or Parallels. Hofmann decided they were not interested in me, and therefore I am not interested in them. It is a pity, because I might have been a good customer since I take thousands of photos. But iPhoto is so much more convenient! Not only is it the environment I already use to organise my photos, it also is really user friendly and makes it very easy to design a book.

I ordered my hardcover book through iPhoto. But the story does not end here. Delivery was expected by the end of December; in fact my order was shown as shipped at Apple's website. I wrote them an e-mail, and I was told that I should wait until January 3rd. If I had not received my package by that date, I should then contact Apple again and tell them about the problem.

I still had not received the book on January 3rd, so I wrote Apple another e-mail. They replied that the package my have been lost by the carrier; they apologised for the delay and offered me the option to duplicate my order and get a refund of the shipping costs. I gave them permission to duplicate my order. However, on the next day, my book arrived. I immediately sent Apple another e-mail telling them my book had arrived, and the second order could by cancelled.

Apple acknowledged my e-mail; they apologised again and offered me a full refund because of the inconvenience and trouble I had had with that order.

I am really satisfied with Apple's Customer Support. Not because I got the book for free, which was not the point. It is because they were on my side from the moment when I still had not bought anything to the very final moment when I got what I wanted. Albeit the delay, the whole experience was simply excellent. Next time I am not even going to consider buying the book at Hofmann.