Is customer service truly dead? Take a minute to think about that, seriously. Think about the last time you had an issue with a product or service and had to contact customer support to have your issue resolved. Did you have a pleasant experience or walk away traumatized and baffled at how poor customer service can be? For you photographers out there wondering if customer service is truly dead or not, you might want to ask Paul C. Buff/Alien Bees.

In April I purchased a ABR800, 56” Moon Unit, and the carrying case. My only complaint with all of this is the color selection, or lack of, for the carrying case. Pink was all I had to pick from. But hey, this is an Alien Bee, right? It needs to stand out and be different, so I figured I could live with it.

About 2 weeks ago, one of the zippers on the case began to have problems. When I zipped the case closed, rather than actually closing the zipper threads it would leave them open. I moved that zipper head all the way to the end of the case and just used the other zipper head. Until that messed up as well, leaving me with no way to close the case and carry it from shoot to shoot.

Now I need to contact customer service. Ugh. I absolutely hate getting to that point. Customer service can be so poor that it makes you feel as if you are in a car, facing a cliff. Driving forward is the equivalent of speaking to customer service when all you really want to do is turn around. Not with Paul C. Buff. Customer service is actually alive and doing quite well.

I contacted them, told them my story, and asked if the case was still covered under warranty. I actually was expecting to hear a reply back, a few days later, short and rude stating that the case was not covered and that I needed to purchase a new one. I expected that or to be instructed to return ship the current case, wait for an evaluation, and then have another shipped to me. Neither was the case.

Rather than having to wait a day or two, I heard back within an hour. Very politely Kimberly informed me the case was covered and asked to provide a shipping address for them to send out a new one. Later that day, I received an auto-generated email saying that the item had already been shipped. Within hours, my little problem was resolved and as of right now, I am officially sold on these products, with the reinforcement of stellar customer service: timely, polite, and appropriate.

As a side note, I wrote this blog out earlier with the intention of posting it later this evening.  After checking the tracking on the package, I see it was delivered to my box this afternoon, already before I could post about how great they are.  Now that my friends, is service.