Awesome Customer Service

For as often as I slag companies on bad customer service, I want to give props where it is due.
I was visiting a data-center out here in Salt Lake City this week, and I noticed that Ogio, the company who makes my laptop case, was located directly behind them in the industrial park.
Now, this laptop case is phenomenal. I love its configuration, the pockets it has and where it has them, pretty much every damned thing about it. EXCEPT the strap that it came with. The shoulder strap has these clasps (for connecting to the bag) that are horrific. They’re essentially a pincer, with a grip on one side that, if you move it, “un-pinches” and releases the bag. Or, alternatively, if you’ve got a lot of stuff in your bag, the sheer weight of it can pull downward enough to force the pincers to move up-and-away against their springs, releasing the bag.
And any design which can “accidentally release your laptop bag with its laptop still inside when you least expect it” is horrible.
After it happened a couple times (specifically the time in Israel that left a massive dent in my MacBook Pro …. still a little annoyed by that, btw…), I ditched the shoulder strap, and just started hand-carrying my laptop everywhere – on my commute, on planes, across Europe, etc., etc… and I hated it. I tried other straps we had for different bags in the house, but they weren’t the right length, or width, or whatever, and it just didn’t work. I did some research, bought a NEW laptop case from a different manufacturer, and after a couple weeks, went right back to hand-carrying my laptop case around by the handle.
So I dropped by the Ogio corporate offices, to see if I could talk to a designer about the defect-in-design. I was told that the designers were all in a meeting for the day, but if I came back in a little bit, the woman in charge of warranty replacements would be back from lunch. So I came back. And as I explained the problem to the receptionist, who then relayed it back to the warranty-person, she immediately understood the problem and came up front with a replacement strap which had a different design for the clasps. She indicated that they were aware that there were problems with the old design, and this was the new design going forward.
And life was good.
The new strap works great, doesn’t suffer from the problems the old one did, and allowed me to immediately start using my messenger-bag-laptop-case as a messenger bag again.
Thanks Ogio! You guys rock!