Oster and Customer Service

Given our propensity for complaining about products/customer service that don’t live up to our expectations,  I want to tell you about my completely opposite experience with Newell Brands.  They are the parent company of Oster.

My Oster French Door Toaster Oven had a plug that would get super hot.  It was making me nervous about the possibility of a fire.  My brother convinced me to contact them.  Given that I’ve had the oven for at least 3 years, I wasn’t optimistic that anything would happen, other than maybe an email telling me it was out of warranty.  Boy was I wrong.

The first response was an email with a return shipping label (bear in mind that this thing was big, and heavy) and they said a replacement would arrive two to three weeks after mine was in transit.  Not after they got it back, but just on the way to them.

There were followup emails when I had questions or comments, all answered promptly and by the same rep (thank you Rowena).   One of these was in response to me asking if I would receive a tracking number.  Well, turns out they were out of stock but would send it as soon as more stock arrived.  I’m pretty sure that’s because mine was red, a color that’s always hard to get.

The very next day, I received another email asking if I would accept the stainless steel model (which has one function more than mine) and if so, to reply to the email.  As I was hitting the send button, my phone was ringing, and it was Rowena who wanted to make sure I saw the email.

My new oven arrived yesterday via Fedex 2nd day delivery right within the original time frame.

For me personally, a company is only as good as the service they provide if there’s a problem.  In this case, I was provided service over and above anything I ever expected.  I bought my oven because of the Oster reputation for quality service, and they came through.

BTW, when Rowena called me, she was having a really bad day.  Not knowing this, I just told her how delighted I was with her and how this was handled.  She then proceeded to thank me profusely for making her bad day better.

So, the question, always, is, "what happens after something happens?"  Obviously, what happened here is that Oster done good.  And I'm glad you shared that experience, considering how infrequently we experience great customer service like that.  

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