4 ms·

Herman Millar. "My chair's seat fabric has torn a bit. Is there anything you can do?" "When did you buy it?" "Erm, around 6 years ago, I think." Checks reco

Herman Millar. "My chair's seat fabric has torn a bit. Is there anything you can do?" "When did you buy it?" "Erm, around 6 years ago, I think." Checks records "No problem, an entire replacement seat will turn up in a truck tomorrow. We'll fit it and leave your chair good as new. Have a nice day, sir."

bshimmin 10y ago
Yeah, this. I bought a Herman Miller chair from a company that ceased to exist not long afterwards and, several years later, Herman Miller still cheerfully sent me a replacement armrest when I phoned up to say I'd managed to damage it whilst moving office. I was deeply impressed. I understand that Barbour, the wax jacket company, are fairly incredible when it comes to customer service too. (Nothing has ever gone wrong with my jacket so I've yet to put this to the test.)
morganvachon 10y ago
Indeed. I have a backpack made by Tumi, it was my brother's bag from around 2001 or so. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited it, and a few years ago I finally noticed it had a little RFID tag and barcoded serial number embedded in it. I went on their website and looked it up, he had never registered it. So I registered it and found that it has a lifetime warranty, even though they stopped making that model years ago, and if it ever has a defect they will fix it or replace it with an equivalent bag. That's some damn fine customer service right there, and it's a shame Google's support is falling on its face when compared to furniture and backpack companies. This article is one more piece of news that makes me glad I excised Google from my life almost completely (I haven't found an alternative to my Nvidia Shield TV yet, but I'm looking).
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Well, with furniture and backpack companies, the tolerance (or "forgiveness") for user error is a lot higher. If you accidentally drop your backpack, it doesn't have a screen or anything that shatters and requires a $150 part replacement. You can't even drop furniture in day-to-day use, really. Moreover, your backpack doesn't have a battery or anything that slowly but surely degrades over time anyways with a meager five-year lifespan. I can't imagine too many ways that a backpack or piece of furniture can become accidentally damaged by "user error." Remember, so many people try to misrepresent their own mistakes (perhaps because they didn't understand what happened or they didn't realize it was their own fault) as product defects that the phone manufacturers all had to add things like internal liquid sensors to their devices. On another note, many of my non-technical friends conflate Android OS software problems with device defects (e.g. "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking). It's probably the reason there are so many ways to buy "refurbished" devices. Needless to say, if Apple or Google started honoring a lifetime warranty, they'd lose a lot of money pretty quickly.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    > "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking Maybe on a 2011 device with 256MB of memory and Gingerbread this was true, but memory management hasn't been a problem on Android phones for a few years now. The memory management has improved in parallel with the amount of available memory, to the point where the device can actually perform worse if the user goes mucking about and closing apps manually. With Marshmallow and Nougat it has become even more efficient.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Eh, not really. On my Moto G 2014 you can consistently crash the system UI if you have more than 2 or 3 apps open, and any further app you open also just dies. The OS already uses 950M of its 1GB of RAM.
      - morganvachon 10y ago
        Interesting, I had a 2nd generation Moto G that would only bog down if I had a misbehaving/badly coded app running (Pandora, and basically any app or game that contained ads). It was a surprisingly peppy device for $100.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Sure that was a Moto G? The 2nd Gen Moto G was sold even at the end of its lifetime for 200$.
        morganvachon 10y ago
        Yep, I got it from Consumer Cellular back when I used their service, their regular price was $150 but I got it on a promo for $100. That's without a contract, in fact I called and had them carrier-unlock it for me a few weeks after I bought it.
sophacles 10y ago
Similar with patagonia - I went to the store to replace my worn out day bag. Worn out mind you - not broken, still functional, just grungy and frayed a bit from years of hard use. The clerk realized I was buying the same bag I was carrying and insisted on processing it as a warranty return. He acknowledged that it was just standard wear and tear, but also that "we have higher standards than that - it should last forever".
danielhooper 10y ago
Restoration Hardware is similar.
mrbill 10y ago
I have a Steelcase LEAP, at least ten years old, that was acquired when a local company went out of business. The v1s had a design flaw where eventually a weld would break and the piece of metal that adjusted the front edge of the seat would fall out of the bottom of the chair. I lived with this for a few years and eventually contacted the local reseller to see if replacement parts were available. Got blown off because I wasn't a corporate customer. About a year later, I decided to contact Steelcase corporate directly. I described the problem, as well as how I'd been basically ignored by the local dealer. Told them how I'd gotten the chair, and that I was willing to pay for parts. Not only did they apologize profusely, they sent me an entire (v2) seat assembly - in black leather - at no charge, described the changes between the versions, and said it would fit on my chair just fine. It did. There's a reason I now have four of these LEAP chairs at home.
obtino 10y ago
> "No problem, an entire replacement seat will turn up in a truck tomorrow. We'll fit it and leave your chair good as new. Have a nice day, sir." I had to fight tooth-and-nail for an aluminum chair that had scratches all over it on delivery to get it replaced. They blamed me for scratching a chair that I'd paid over $1k!

bshimmin 10y ago

Yeah, this. I bought a Herman Miller chair from a company that ceased to exist not long afterwards and, several years later, Herman Miller still cheerfully sent me a replacement armrest when I phoned up to say I'd managed to damage it whilst moving office. I was deeply impressed. I understand that Barbour, the wax jacket company, are fairly incredible when it comes to customer service too. (Nothing has ever gone wrong with my jacket so I've yet to put this to the test.)

morganvachon 10y ago

Indeed. I have a backpack made by Tumi, it was my brother's bag from around 2001 or so. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited it, and a few years ago I finally noticed it had a little RFID tag and barcoded serial number embedded in it. I went on their website and looked it up, he had never registered it. So I registered it and found that it has a lifetime warranty, even though they stopped making that model years ago, and if it ever has a defect they will fix it or replace it with an equivalent bag. That's some damn fine customer service right there, and it's a shame Google's support is falling on its face when compared to furniture and backpack companies. This article is one more piece of news that makes me glad I excised Google from my life almost completely (I haven't found an alternative to my Nvidia Shield TV yet, but I'm looking).

Hydraulix989 10y ago
Well, with furniture and backpack companies, the tolerance (or "forgiveness") for user error is a lot higher. If you accidentally drop your backpack, it doesn't have a screen or anything that shatters and requires a $150 part replacement. You can't even drop furniture in day-to-day use, really. Moreover, your backpack doesn't have a battery or anything that slowly but surely degrades over time anyways with a meager five-year lifespan. I can't imagine too many ways that a backpack or piece of furniture can become accidentally damaged by "user error." Remember, so many people try to misrepresent their own mistakes (perhaps because they didn't understand what happened or they didn't realize it was their own fault) as product defects that the phone manufacturers all had to add things like internal liquid sensors to their devices. On another note, many of my non-technical friends conflate Android OS software problems with device defects (e.g. "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking). It's probably the reason there are so many ways to buy "refurbished" devices. Needless to say, if Apple or Google started honoring a lifetime warranty, they'd lose a lot of money pretty quickly.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  > "my phone died" actually meant that they had 300 running processes because they never learned how to close running apps on Android -- which to be fair is a PRETTY buried feature that doesn't lend itself well to user discovery; the number of people I see that don't realize they have to manually close apps on their Android phone is shocking Maybe on a 2011 device with 256MB of memory and Gingerbread this was true, but memory management hasn't been a problem on Android phones for a few years now. The memory management has improved in parallel with the amount of available memory, to the point where the device can actually perform worse if the user goes mucking about and closing apps manually. With Marshmallow and Nougat it has become even more efficient.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Eh, not really. On my Moto G 2014 you can consistently crash the system UI if you have more than 2 or 3 apps open, and any further app you open also just dies. The OS already uses 950M of its 1GB of RAM.
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      Interesting, I had a 2nd generation Moto G that would only bog down if I had a misbehaving/badly coded app running (Pandora, and basically any app or game that contained ads). It was a surprisingly peppy device for $100.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Sure that was a Moto G? The 2nd Gen Moto G was sold even at the end of its lifetime for 200$.
        morganvachon 10y ago
        Yep, I got it from Consumer Cellular back when I used their service, their regular price was $150 but I got it on a promo for $100. That's without a contract, in fact I called and had them carrier-unlock it for me a few weeks after I bought it.

sophacles 10y ago

Similar with patagonia - I went to the store to replace my worn out day bag. Worn out mind you - not broken, still functional, just grungy and frayed a bit from years of hard use. The clerk realized I was buying the same bag I was carrying and insisted on processing it as a warranty return. He acknowledged that it was just standard wear and tear, but also that "we have higher standards than that - it should last forever".

danielhooper 10y ago

Restoration Hardware is similar.

mrbill 10y ago

I have a Steelcase LEAP, at least ten years old, that was acquired when a local company went out of business. The v1s had a design flaw where eventually a weld would break and the piece of metal that adjusted the front edge of the seat would fall out of the bottom of the chair. I lived with this for a few years and eventually contacted the local reseller to see if replacement parts were available. Got blown off because I wasn't a corporate customer. About a year later, I decided to contact Steelcase corporate directly. I described the problem, as well as how I'd been basically ignored by the local dealer. Told them how I'd gotten the chair, and that I was willing to pay for parts. Not only did they apologize profusely, they sent me an entire (v2) seat assembly - in black leather - at no charge, described the changes between the versions, and said it would fit on my chair just fine. It did. There's a reason I now have four of these LEAP chairs at home.

obtino 10y ago

> "No problem, an entire replacement seat will turn up in a truck tomorrow. We'll fit it and leave your chair good as new. Have a nice day, sir." I had to fight tooth-and-nail for an aluminum chair that had scratches all over it on delivery to get it replaced. They blamed me for scratching a chair that I'd paid over $1k!