Last Thursday, my Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones broke. I was bummed, but hey, they were almost 10 years old, so I couldn’t complain about the life. I tweeted about it, and somebody (not Bose) said that I should call their support line, as they often offer smoking prices to exchange your broken headset with a new one.
I figured, why not try. So I called.
After a very simple IVR, I got to the headphone area, and the agent was on immediately. No on hold music, no pitches while waiting for an agent. I got someone immediately.
He was very helpful. I explained what happened, and was inquiring whether they could repair the set. The answer was no, but I could swap it for the 2 generation newer headphones for << 1/2 the price of a new set. I deliberated for a few seconds, and said why not.
Turns out that I was in the system (the ear cups were crumbling a couple years ago, so I bought a new set from them online). This happened on Friday.
Saturday, I took the prepaid shipper label, and hiked on over to the local UPS store.
Tuesday, I got the email that they had established that I shipped the old ones back, and that they had shipped the new set to me. Since their shipping warehouse is in Tolleson AZ, they arrived on Wednesday.
This AM, Thursday, I have my new headphones, and I am blissfully listening to my music at my desk. Awesome.
The real pluses:
- The process of navigating their IVR system was easy- peasy. It took like 2 touches of the dial pad to get to the headphones people. Nothing is more annoying than an IVR tree that is 4 or 5 layers deep.
- Once I got to the headphone department, my call was answered instantly. No on hold music. No on hold sales pitches. A real live person. If you live and die by customer support, be sure to have enough agents to take calls quickly, and don’t try to sell people more stuff while they are waiting.
- The agent was pleasant and very helpful. I went into the conversation thinking that if there wasn’t a reasonable ($25) repair option, I would just walk away. But he was quite effective at getting me to part with $130 for a new set of better headphones.
Consequently, I will probably continue to be a Bose customer, at least for their noise canceling headphones.
Well done!
