A dying art

I have one of those keychain lights. If you know me, undoubtedly, I’ve shone one in your face (either by design or by accident) and you’ve been blinded by it. These LED keychain lights are Photon Lights. Extremely useful in my line of work, they light up the backs of machines and allow me to get at whatever cable I’m looking for. They’re great at night just walking around. Also useful on road trips. And the amount of light they produce is incredible. Ask me, I’ll show you! Regardless. . .

Being me, I bought one of the most expensive and feature filled model of these lights about a year ago. Cost me about twenty five dollars. To my disappointment, I noticed that battery life was extremely short. I rolled my eyes, chalked it up to “early adopter” risk, put it on a shelf, and promptly forgot about it for a year.

Browsing the web, I found out that there was a lifetime warranty for said light. I sent it back to them with a letter explaining the short battery life. A week later, I’ve got a brand new light.

And spare batteries.

And, in addition, they sent me another Photon Light with a different color LED, “for my trouble.” It’s yellow.

All for the price of postage and an envelope. (For the record–one dollar and ninety seven cents.) Now that’s a warranty.

And yes, I realize that talking about this is exactly what they want me to do. But could you imagine if other companies handled defective merchandise in the same way?

“I’m sorry that we had to recall your car. But here’s a brand new one, and another one for your trouble. I hope you like yellow.”

But we all know that’s not going to happen.

Taking care of customers, after all, is a dying art.