M is for Money

Mr. M has been on a roll lately with customer service when a product or service is unsatisfactory. With work being slow, he has plenty of time to complain. First it was an awful carton of ice cream – got a coupon for a free replacement. Then it was the poorly designed ketchup bottle – coupons for free ketchup and discounts on their other products. Last week it was a bone filled burger from Fresh and Easy.

For those outside of the southwest, Fresh and Easy is a new grocery chain looking to conquer the nation. The little upstart is backed by European supermarket giant Tesco. The best description I can come up with – imagine a regular supermarket like a Ralphs or Publix marries Trader Joes and has a baby. Fresh and Easy is a hybrid, small like a TJs but with a lot of national brands. They also carry a lot of private label prepared foods like Trader Joes. The primary drawback – they don’t accept manufacturer’s coupons. But they do have pretty low prices, by keeping the stores Spartan, advertising to a minimum and solely self checkout. We’ll see if the young upstart survives, but now to that burger.

Mr. M was pretty upset when he bit into that burger, the piece of bone hurt his tooth. He promptly located a phone number for the company and alerted them to this quality control problem. They didn’t say much at the time, but then last week an envelope arrived bearing Mr. M’s name. They sent their special store coupons, $5 off a $20 purchase. Even better they sent 4 of these coupons. We just wanted acknowledgment of the problem, $20 off will do. Again this sort of considerate response from a company shows me they genuinely care about their customers. We’ll keep shopping there despite a bad experience in return.


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