CORONA DEL MAR TODAY

Customer Service

About a week after my daughter’s birthday, at which we served a lovely, purple-frosted Susiecakes cake, the bakery staff called to make sure it was good.

“Did your daughter like the color, did your guests like the cake,” they asked. Indeed, I said. It was a hit.

I love good customer service. Too bad you don’t find it more often.

Take the Corona del Mar shop that rented us a mailbox last winter. We misunderstood and thought we had paid for a year, not six months. We use this for non-urgent business papers and don’t check it often. The rent, therefore, went unpaid when they invoiced us with a slip in the box. When we didn’t pay, the shop claimed they called us about it, but they did not. They had backup addresses for us, but they didn’t bother with those either.

Nope, they just sent all our mail back to the original senders.

Granted, we should pay our bills. But really. They could have tried an iota harder to give us some customer service. The number they called was my cell phone number. It has a log of missed calls, it has voice mail — spare me some tall tail that it didn’t work.

“Maybe we misdialed,” the clerk said.

When I asked why they didn’t try sending me a notice to my backup address, he said that it was too expensive.

Why, then, did they ask us for the darn backup address?

I find that I really like companies that understand humans make mistakes. The idea of people out there, waiting to pounce if you miss a payment or spend one second too long with a parking meter, that bums me out.

This business had the right, I suppose, to cut me off. But wouldn’t it be great if they’d made a little effort?

Customer service. It should be better than ever in a rough economy. At least Susiecakes gets it.