Outstanding Customer Service

[laynesaddiction]

Unfortunately IMHO it is becoming harder to find truly exceptional customer service with any vendor or in any walk of life here in the USA. While there are certainly exceptions, the current trend appears that the continual degeneration of said “customer service” is showing no signs of slowing down. So, instead of throwing more fuel on the fire let me share with you an example to the contrary where the provider actually (in my mind) went above and beyond the call of duty and provided truly outstanding customer service.

My wife and I have owned and enjoyed products from Dan D’Agostino for years after purchasing his Momentum stereo amplifier and Momentum preamplifier shortly after they were respectively released. Recently we had our Momentum stereo amplifier converted to a Monoblock via their refit policy. With this newly retrofitted amp along with a new second Monoblock, we now have a dual Monoblock set of amplifiers for our system. The process was very quick, painless, and we are thrilled with the results.

For those not familiar with these amplifiers, they have a light meter in the front which is driven by a switch that controls the intensity of the light (low, high, off). We noticed that when both amplifiers had their settings to low, the intensity was lower than the intensity on the preamplifier, so we switched the settings on both amplifiers to their high setting in an attempt to better match the preamplifiers light intensity. What we discovered was that the high setting for amp1 was significantly brighter than the high setting for amp 2, so eventually we just put them both back to the low setting (since both amps had the same intensity at this setting) and moved on. While we would have liked the high setting to better match the preamplifier, it was no big deal at all to leave them at the low setting.

When our dealer called asking how things were going with our amplifiers, along with describing the excitement and sonic happiness we were experiencing, we mentioned this observation to him and told him it wasn’t anything we needed to be resolved as we are fine with the low setting.

Yesterday I received a call from the dealer stating that he talked with Mr. D’Agostino about our experience and Dan was unhappy that we had the mismatch of the high intensity light settings. When they talked about the options for how to fix it, it was determined that the amps would have to go back to the factory since it was an involved process and not something that was easily done in the field. Although the dealer re-iterated that we were fine with the situation, Dan was steadfast in that he wanted to resolve the situation. Somewhere in the conversation Dan pointed out that he would be out at the dealer for a “Music Matters” event that is held every year near where we live. He said that he would pre-calibrate new boards and bring out all of the necessary equipment and tools needed to personally fix the issue. All we had to do was get the amps to the store and he would do the rest.

Now I am not sure how compelling it is for a vendor while traveling from wherever in the country/world to a music event to now have to tear apart a couple of their amps and fix something outside of their factory as they are most likely just beat from the travel. Dan not only offered it, he was adamant about it. For a vendor to even pro-actively think about doing something like this is amazing and very much appreciated.

To my wife and I this is going way above and beyond the call of duty and shows this man’s integrity and the pride he has for his products. We are heartily thankful and appreciative of the outstanding customer service that was given to us by Dan D’Agostino - the company and the man.

[joeinid]

Great story and experience Anthony, thank you for posting.

[the professor]

Thanks for sharing.

Dan and his team are GREAT! They truly want their customers to be happy and have a perfect product.

[asiufy]

Cool! I expected nothing less from Mr. D'Agostino

I've also had a similar experience with darTZeel's Hervé Deletraz. He took a significant chunk of his time (in Rio de Janeiro, no less!) to check a preamp and adjust the phono stage parameters. This is something any skilled tech could've done, but he insisted on doing the work himself!

As the OP said, these kind of stories are a relief for the now customary "blame the customer" routine that a lot of brands carry these days, not only in audio of course...


alexandre

[Odyssey]

I love stories like these! It renews my faith in the high end.

[Ritmo]

Outstanding! I had a small issue with my amp last year. Dan and Petra went out their way to take care of the issue.