Kudos to BOSE
Categorised under: Announcements
Last month, my expensive BOSE noice-cancelling headphone disintegrated in the middle of an international trip. They’d been dying for some time, with the ear pieces shedding bits of rubber, and the plastic cracking throughout. A year ago, I’d had to tape up one arm with sticky tape, but this time it had broken for good.
I’d looked after these headphones very well, and they’d been used lightly (pretty much only on long-haul flights). So I was naturally not happy with their demise.
Still, I’d had them for 4 years, which is 3 full years past the 1 year warranty.
So with no particular expectations, I rang up my local BOSE store to find out what I could get done. A friendly salesperson gave me the details for the BOSE Service Centre, and suggested I send across the headphones with a covering letter explaining the history and current situation. I was then assured that they’d “see what they could do”.
That was Friday. Today (Tuesday), I hadn’t heard anything, so was going to ring me just to check that the headphones had arrived (I’ve got another round-the-world trip coming up shortly). But first a package arrived in the mail.
Inside was a brand-new pair of headphones, with a shipping sheet simply saying “Replaced as a gesture of goodwill from BOSE”. No big fanfair, no lengthy explanation, no complex procedures or bureaucracy. Just “here’s a new pair of headphones, enjoy”, with the implicit recognition of the quality and standing associated with the BOSE brand.
Now that’s what I call customer service. Just wanted to say thank you as publicly as I could. Back to regular programming…
James Robertson is the Managing Director of 