Recently I had a memorable experience.
   A garage door spring broke and the company I called to fix it – found via a quick search on a neighborhood word-of-mouth site – arrived promptly and gave me an outrageous quote: $1,200 compared to the $289 I’d paid in 2016 for the same service.
   When I asked how it could possibly be that high, the technician looked me in the eye and blamed inflation. Not knowing the garage door industry, coupled with the fact he applied a discount bringing the quote to $1,050, I went with it. To be clear, it didn’t feel right but my car was stuck in the garage and I wasn’t sure it would be possible to find someone cheaper or how quickly they could come out.
   Afterward I learned, via talking to 25 other garage door companies and/or individuals in my area who’d had the same service performed within the past 1-12 months, that it should’ve cost $400-$500.
   To put it in other words, this company’s pricing wasn’t just high, it was borderline predatory.
   By this point my only recourse was to take the same action many disgruntled customers do: one-star reviews on Google, Yelp and Facebook, as well as scathing posts on Nextdoor and the same neighborhood site I’d originally heard about them on (for the record, I also learned this business used to be locally owned and well-respected, but had been bought out by a large company about a year ago. Since that point numerous complaints had been flooding in. That’s why it’s important to ALWAYS manually sort reviews by “Most Recent.” The default setting of “Most Popular” can be misleading because many are outdated).
    My posts got lots of traffic and the validation felt good. But what happened next was truly unexpected.
   Five days later I get a call out of the blue. It’s the “customer experience manager” of the new corporate ownership, wanting to discuss my reviews.
   He was perfectly nice and listened to me describe the experience and my feelings about it. He apologized, explained their perspective, asked questions about the service I received, then ultimately agreed with me the price was too high and authorized a $400 refund.
    Now, that action was much appreciated. But I was also impressed he took the initiative to reach out and proactively discuss. There are many small businesses that don’t take this step. This, to me, suggests that a company cares (or at least is worried enough about bad publicity to monitor things).
    Bottom line: all businesses large and small mess up occasionally, in different ways. It’s how and if they try to fix things that will really impact their customers’ mindset. Sometimes you can end up with better feelings about a company that messed up and tried to make things right than you will about a company where nothing went wrong but the experience was just OK.
    Prior to receiving that phone call, I’d been weighing calling the BBB or other possible steps. Afterward, while I wouldn’t say we’re BFFs, I will be factually amending my reviews to acknowledge the respect they just earned.