Now That is Customer Service!

I think it was 3 years ago (maybe 4) we were at the mall and Linens and Things was going out of business. We had been looking at getting a fan, but hadn't yet. The one I was interested in getting was more than I was willing to pay. I wanted a pretty fan. It was also a bonus that the base was so heavy that the boys couldn't knock it over! So, Linens and Things happened to have this fan that I had been wanting and it was 40% off. To top that off, I had a coupon for an additional 20% off that they let me use! SWEET! I'm pretty certain that the original price was about $140, so we ended up paying about $70 with tax. Still a pricey fan, but I was super excited to be getting a good deal!

When we lived in our apartment in Alexandria, we used this fan in the living room. However, when we moved to this townhouse 2.5 years ago, we put the fan in our room. We like sleeping with a fan turned on for the noise, but it is also hard to keep our 3 level townhouse cool. Well, several months back, our fan started acting up. It would squeak really, really loudly. We had to move it this way and move it that way and finally it would stop. We are so addicted to sleeping with that fan that once we got it to stop squeaking, we refused to turn it off. Well, that is until I was in the shower one day and the smoke detector went off in my bedroom. I could not figure out the cause. I didn't smell or see smoke and none of the other smoke detectors were going off. I turned the fan off because I thought it might be the culprit. It wasn't. After running around the house trying to figure out if I needed to grab the kids and get out, I realized that the smoke detector was now in my hand and was still going off in rooms with other smoke detectors and the others remained silent (I even took the battery out and put it back in each time). I determined that it was not an emergency and took the battery out until I could figure out the issue (turns out it had drywall dust in it).

So, now the fan had been turned off and I feared that it would not turn back on that night without causing problems. Miraculously, it turned on and ran just fine! That worked for a while, but soon enough it was back to its old tricks. Finally one night it had enough and started squeaking like crazy and then it got quieter and quieter until it just stopped! Now, we have to have a fan, so we took the one that was in the living room and moved it up to our room. Sure, it keeps us cool, but it doesn't produce the right amount of noise for our sleeping pleasure. We even went to the store to look at fans and all of them were too quiet!

I remembered that our fan had a warranty and looked it up online. Five years! A few days ago, I called the company. They asked me a few questions and then told me that my new fan would arrive in 7-14 business days (with absolutely no cost to me!!). Yesterday it arrived and I slept like a baby last night! Now that is customer service!