Customer service kudos

I meant to mention these a while back. They were two experiences with products or services where I was particularly struck by how well things worked.

#1: We had an ant problem in our kitchen. "Little damn ants, buddy!" (Boy, now THERE'S an obscure quote.) It was so bad, the kids would be doing their homework on the counter, and it would be write write write SLAM write write write SLAM (the slams being them swatting an ant crawling across their pages.)

We have a pest control service, and they came in no less than four times, to no avail. Still with the ants.

Then we happened to be at the neighborhood hardware store, and at the register they had a product called Terro, the liquid ant killer. Hey, only $3, why not give it a shot, said I. You put these little puddles of the stuff down on some cardboard discs included with the tube, and the ants think its yummy yummy maple syrup, when instead it's good old boric acid. They bring it back to the colony and everyone's dead. And it bleeping WORKS. Ants all gone in two days. Worth every penny and then some.

#2: Target. I bought a videogame there for Theo for Christmas, then in usual kid fashion, he decided to change his Xmas list and wanted a different game. I'd lost the receipt and was not looking forward to the experience with returning it for credit. Little did I know, you just bring the item, they scan it, scan your card, and bingo, instant credit. Damn.