Saturday, January 10, 2009

Bed, Bath and Beyond the Call of Duty

While the Panthers are getting their heads handed to them by the Cardinals in the play-off game, I'll use the time for something constructive -- like giving props to Bed, Bath and Beyond. I read where Linens 'n Things went out of business recently in this bad economy, but BB&B was overflowing with customers today.

Went to BB&B this afternoon to get a small appliance that only they sell. While I was getting a very helpful explanation about the appliance from one of the salesmen, I mentioned that another rather expensive appliance I had bought from them three years before had recently stopped working. It was under warranty and the manufacturer is shipping me a replacement part, but the BB&B guy amazed me by saying, "If you have any further problem with it, just bring the whole thing back to us and we'll give you a new one and we'll handle the return to the manufacturer. We stand behind what we sell."

What? I was blown away by that. That's an amazing policy.

You know those ubiquitous blue and white BB&B discount coupons that come in the mail? They have an expiration date on them and I have thrown scads of them away in the past because they expired before I used them. But the lady in the checkout line ahead of me had a whole stack of them that she applied to her numerous purchases. So I asked the checkout clerk how the lady was able to use so many of the coupons -- "Don't they expire after a few weeks?"

"Yes, they have expiration dates on them but we'll honor them anyway -- one coupon per item purchased. Just save them and bring in one for each item you purchase and we'll honor them even if they''ve expired. In fact, you can bring in any old BB&B receipts for which you didn't use a coupon and we'll refund the discounted amount to you based on using a current coupon."

Okay -- I'm now a BB&B customer. Has anyone else had a similar good (or not good) experience at BB&B? If this is how they do business, I'm not surprised they're weathering the bad economy while others are going out of business.

Halftime's over -- time to see if the Panthers can stop embarrassing themselves and get back in the game.

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