splityarn: the alphabet game

I love it when things go well, but it's almost more satisfying when things don't go well and then are made right. I grew up in the hospitality business (my parents owned a motel) and then I went on to work in a resort town. Customer service is in my blood. This is both good and bad. Good, because I'm easy to deal with, usually smiling, very approachable and I pick up garbage wherever I go. Bad, because I'm hypercritical in service situations and expect a level of service that usually isn't forthcoming.

I recently bought a boatload of Scrabble tiles on eBay, with the intention of making more Scrabble tile stitch markers over the weekend. On Friday, my package had arrived in the mail. I rushed it down from the mailbox, ran into the house and excitedly tore into it. Scrabble tiles? Nope. It was addressed to me, from the right seller, but inside was a board game for someone else. The seller had mixed up packages. Somewhere in Nebraska a family was opening a box hoping to spend some quality time together and what they got were 200 Scrabble tiles in a plastic bag. Whoops!

I alerted the seller to her error, fully expecting that I would have to come up with an agreeable solution on my own. It's been my experience that large volume sellers don't try very hard. They can ride through a ding to their feedback rating with nary a percentage point lost. This seller surprised me. She forwarded me the correct address for the board game, refunded my shipping costs and doubled my tile winnings. This morning 400 Scrabble tiles found their way into my living room and I couldn't be happier.