It’s funny what a difference a day or two can make. After posting my horrific experience with my satellite radio service, a few days later I had an experience that went from bad to good in one short call. This week I ordered paper – a lot of paper. I print a lot. Any way, I had a morning meeting, so wasn’t around when the delivery arrived, otherwise who knows how things might have gone. When I get back, I find two large boxes waiting for me, clearly my order. One of them, no joke, looks like it’s been hit by a car: taped up, scraped like it had been dragged down the road. I haul both boxes in and unpack them; the first box was fine, everything was intact and the paper was nicely tucked in the reams. The other box, well, all I can say is “they tried”; the first couple reams were split open, which would have been okay, until I got about halfway down the box and found dirty, ruined paper -a few reams were split open completely, I’m not even sure all 500 sheets were in their respective reams. They taped it in so it wouldn’t move. Nice…not.

Alright, I know things can happen, but this was a bad patch job and I wasn’t going to just leave things alone and put these sheets in the recycle bin without a fight. I called the supplier, which happens to also be a very successful overnight shipper. I told them what happened and she actually apologized profusely and gave me several options; they could replace the damaged reams, they could credit me for them, which did I prefer? It was refreshing to be given options, it was refreshing to have a supplier accept responsibility for a mistake, then willingly and without argument, correct it.