I’m not sure if this is any longer the case but I’ve heard that Leatherman, despite “only” having a 25 year gurantee will pretty much repair/replace any of their multitools you send them no matter how old.
Their tools though have gotten crazy expensive.
When a friend broke the saw blade on my Leatherman (which was ~15 years old), I sent it back to them for repair. A short while later I received a brand new Leatherman with a letter saying they were so sorry, but they didn’t have parts for my old model anymore, so they sent me a brand new, better model. The letter also said they understood people had emotional connections to their tools, so if I decided I wanted the old broken tool back instead, they would hold onto it for me for a few months, and all I’d need to do was email them asking to swap.
10/10 the best customer service I’ve ever received.
It still is as far as I know
I bought the last one at my Costco for $30-$50. My wife kept asking me why would I need it when I already have all of the other tools it has. She didn’t get it. Still doesn’t. I’m so happy to have this thing at work. Comes in really handy. It’s good to hear about Leatherman being a good company. What’s that? Have I ever used it? Well… Not yet, but I know a situation will eventually arise and I will be glad to have it readily available.
I use mine a lot, but it’s even more frequent that I think “damn, my leatherman is in my backpack and I could really use it right now”
There is a local employee owned hardware store near me that will go out of their way to make you a deal. No idea how they do it, plenty of employees around to ask questions and some of the best prices around.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long. Also if you want employees to get good pay/benefits and such they have to charge more and in turn you can’t shop for the cheapest.
That said I think the concern comes when they start trying to squeeze every last cent out regardless of the customer relationship and long term image. As soon as a company goes public you now have a board that will get rid of you if you don’t push stock values up another percent. Even if you want to have long term growth and goodwill the board is pushing for profit growth targets this quarter and they pay mostly in shares too. I find the best corporate customer/profit balance comes from private firms.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long
Businesses have always cared about profit; just reasonable profit. They would make a product, determine the cost of manufacture, apply a modest profit margin to it (usually about 30%) and factor in things like employee raises and benefits, expanding the business, and building up a financial safety net.
Businesses were run by humans, for humans.
Hedge fund managers and venture capitalists in the 80s changed that. Rather than assigning a fixed profit margin each year to try to maintain, the rule became “how much profit can we squeeze out by sales and (most damning) by systematically dismantling anything that we pay for that benefits our employees”.
This is the end result of having taking human stakeholders out of the business decisions and replacing them with shareholders that are mostly other businesses, hedge funds, and venture capitalists. Profit becomes the ONLY motive, rather than one of many.
Yup. If you are bought by anything with “capital” or “equity” in its name you are fucked.
Probably a very niche answer, but Korbel winery in California has gone above and beyond to help me out on several occasions, and real people actually answer the phone when you call customer service. I don’t know anything about their owner or politics, but I’ve had nothing but outstanding experiences with them.
Saddleback Leather springs to mind. Their stuff is expensive but they have a 100 year warranty and their tag line is “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead”. I have a couple of their bags, belts, and wallets. I don’t expect to ever need to replace them.
First thing I bought from them was a briefcase back in 2011. About three years after I bought it one of the steel D-Rings for the strap failed and they paid courier fees for me to return the briefcase from the UK, replaced the part, cleaned the bag up, and sent it back, no questions asked.
Full disclosure: 1) they’re an American company which might put some off buying in the current climate and 2) the founder is a devout Christian which might put others off but none of their products have ever tried to make me a believer so I’m ok with it.
LEGO comes to mind. Not cheap, but definitely knows how to keep a healthy and active relationship with their customers.
I second this one. LEGO is really well made, the sets are well designed, and the instructions are some of the best you’ll ever see in any build-it-yourself product of any kind.
I loved them as a kid and just bought a 3 in 1 kit for my Granddaughters Easter basket. She is nutty balls over Legos. That company has secured multi-generational love.
If you do the math as time has gone on the average set has gotten far more complex and used more pieces. If you look at the prices from a the perspective of price per individual Lego piece I am pretty sure they have pretty much stayed the same price the entire time. I watched a YouTube video essay about it like a year ago so it’s probably still true today.
@[email protected] can confirm. My son bought a set that was missing on of the bags. Filled out a form and uploaded a picture of the box + what he had built so far and the remaining bags. 48 hours later, we had the missing bag and he was back to building.
So many other brands wouldn’t even respond to something like that. You’d have to take it back to where you bought it for a refund, buy another set and start the build again.
Lego customer service understands that their product is more than colored plastic.
Lego quality is still good but has noticeably degraded over the years.
I’m a big Lego fan and I agree that they are one of the best in this regard. However, they’ve taken up some relatively new practices such as compromising mold and instruction quality in favor of faster production, conditioning kids to gamble with minifigure loot boxes, commandeering a cornerstone of the secondhand market (BrickLink), and gatekeeping certain themes or genres behind massive price tags, which are not in the favor of customers in general.
Edit: There’s definitely been some price gouging with certain sets/themes too, ex. 76232 and 76292; and lazy designs and cheaping out on play/quality, ex. 76314. The Pharrell Williams movie and sets also don’t sit right with me because it feels like anybody can just buy their way into the medium/merchandise now. The Red Bull and Kick sponsors on the new F1 cars additionally are not true to how you’d want to think of the brand.
I hate the loot boxes and I hate the priced out gatekeeping
The minifig loot box thing bugs me
I like it. It gives me a nice way to give my kids little gifts that don’t take up much space. If I had to pick specific ones it wouldn’t work as well.
With that said, I do use an app to make sure they’re not getting duplicates.
Chewy dog food will send you flowers and a refund if you pet died.
I called their customer support, and a person answered. Like, right away. I was caught completely off guard. They resolved my issue in under a minute.
My sleepy brain was reading this as if your pet dies from eating their pet food.
Still applies
Arizona iced tea is still 99 cents.
Chapman’s ice cream! They have continuously been in the best interest of their employees and local communities. During COVID, they made sure that all their employees kept their jobs and even raised their wages. The company even went as far as to buy several deep freezers to store to COVID vaccines, because the town where their factory is located has a lot of elderly people and wanted to ensure their protection from the virus.
They will always be one of the few brands that I am completely loyal to.
They have also announced that if they have to reduce or stop production because of the current tariffs, they will continue to pay all of their employees.
All of their ice cream is also made in nut free factories, so that people with nut allergies can safely eat it. I’m not sure, but that may be the only ice cream that makes such a guarantee.
Dean’s Beans coffee. The owner was an amazing guy, fair trade, all that. When he stepped down, he handed ownership to the employees.
Oddly, I got some of the best customer service in my life from Union Scale; the company who makes the office chair I bought from Staples.
-> more than profit
Literally none. Where they vary is in how maliciously they’ll engage with consumers for a quick buck, and within that spectrum some are definitely better than others, but every single one of them draws the line at profit.
Thinking of Paul Newman’s salad dressings and spaghetti sauces. The company donates all their profits to charity.
I’m sure there are other companies/products like this. I’d love to know what they are.
I agree but to me some brands cross a line making then especially horrible. I don’t generally boycott products because I would never be able to buy anything if I tried to stick with GOOD companies. But some are so bad I do avoid them.
Tesla Walmart Monsanto ( they were bought by Bayer) Just to name a few of the top of my head. Obviously there is no shortage of truly terrible companies.
Well yeah, without it there would be no business …
That’s the point. OP is chasing a unicorn.
The wording can be improved, I think “maximising profit” would fix it. Which is obviously what OP meant as we all understand it.
I would say any company that offers (and honors) a lifelong warranty defies this.
Arizona Iced Tea
Dudes a multi-billionaire and doesn’t understand how someone could want more.
That’s why he puts the MSRP on the cans even tho he can’t control store prices. Most stores still sell it at 99c, because they’re still making profit on it.
He could sell them for 2x and barely lose any sales, but why?
I heard this story before and it is truly amazing how the CEO still stands behinds his principles and values.
It would be a lot more common if we had anti-monopoly laws still.
There used to be a shit ton of regional stuff like this where one family owned everything, and 10 million a year was good enough instead of needing x% growth forever.
If you’re not cutting every corner to make the quarterly % increase constantly go up, workers aren’t getting fucked over as much, at least not every time. So everyone losses when we have mega corps. And that’s the natural result of unregulated capitalism
Dischord Records.
Fugazi record label.
Record/CD prices are capped low to cover production and distribution costs.
Personal contact and service, with real people, when ordering.
Live show prices were capped at $5.
A focus on real connection between artists and fans, rather than extracting maximum profit using music as a vehicle.
Live shows were excellent.
Patagonia is solid. Osprey (packs) recently sold to a conglomerate but I have an old pack I can send in soon to test their “we will repair it no matter what” guarantee.
I love Patagonia. They’ll repair anything even if you’re not the original owner., they use sustainable and recycled materials and they’ve used their profits to protect huge areas of land.
Too bad they are so expensive though. Out of my budget.
Buy stuff on sale or used, then take it to the Patagonia store to get repaired. Great for things like jeans, they’ll last a lifetime.
That Osprey news is new to me. That’s a shame. Hopefully they don’t go to shit fast.
