Liquipel, This is Grade 'A' Customer Support

I'm sure many of you have already seen my CES video about Liquipel and their incredibly cool water-resistant coating for mobile devices.  Needless to say, I was highly impressed with the service, and rather than wait around for days—maybe weeks—to receive a free coating for review, I just dove in and paid $60 for the service.

Ordering from Liquipel was a breeze.  They give you a little packing slip to throw in with your phone so that they can identify it, and then you mail it out with your parcel service of choice.  I chose USPS.  I ordered the service Thursday night, and shipped the phone out Friday afternoon.  All was well.  Or so I thought.

Late Monday evening (over 3 days after my order), I received this (what appeared to be) automated email:

Hello,

We are extremely sorry but due to an incredible demand for the Liquipel technology we must ask that you hold off on sending your device. We are working diligently to reopen our retail service and in the meantime are unable to process anymore devices at this time. We are incredibly sorry for the delay and will be working around the clock until we are caught back up. If you have already sent your device please contact us and we will work with you to come to the most convenient resolution possible.

As one should imagine, I was less than happy.  I had already paid $15 to ship the phone, and I wasn't too keen on the fact that I had paid $60 for a service that was delayed into infinitum.  I emailed back with the following response:

This doesn't look to kindly upon your company!  I already sent my device as requested in my order form.  I run a tech video network (I published a little preview two days ago at CES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ4g-5VBzVs), and I have tons of really anxious viewers ready to see how Liquipel holds up.  If we can avoid delay, that would be nice, but I don't know how you want to work this out as I've already shipped my device and don't really want to send it back again.

A bit harsh?  Nah, I really don't think so.  I was nothing short of infuriated.  If they weren't able to fulfill orders, why accept them?  Even worse, why wait 4 days to tell me?  I received an email a few hours later (at 12:08 am!):

Hello Quinn,

I'm pretty sure I had the opportunity to meet you at CES and I understand completely your frustration. I have seen your video and I know that it is because of people like you that we are getting the amount of interest we are. Our number one goal at Liquipel is customer service and that is why I am emailing you personally. Our service turn around time and customer perception of our company are absolutely crucial to our success. I understand the situation is quite unfavorably and that is why we are working around the clock to get caught up. We just want to make sure we are being clear about the situation and communicate as well as possible. I will know more clearly in the morning what the output status is. We would certainly appreciate your loyalty through this transition and will do anything necessary to keep you happy. I will give you an update in the morning. Either way I am happy to refund your order for being such a supporter of our. Again thank you for interest and business. 

Regards,

Kevin Bacon

Liquipel Co-President/Founder

An email directly from the founder himself?  Nice, although I was still rather irritated, and as such, slightly snide:

Kevin,

I'll be looking forward to the update, although, you might consider not accepting orders until you're ready to fulfill them.  Thanks.

About 12 hours later (yesterday afternoon), I got an email from Alex Hill, the operations manager that I spoke to at CES. 

Hey Quinn This is Alex!

We just got your phone in today, We can either turn around and overnight it back to you. Or push it threw the line. how would you like to proceed?

I told him to keep my place in the line, and that they could send it back whenever/if-ever they were finished with it.

Alright, so here we are 5 days later, and I had been offered a refund.  That's certainly nice of them, but any company would do this if they couldn't fulfill orders, right?  Most likely.  So I remained bitter and unimpressed with the company thus far.  Nonetheless, I knew how cool the service was, and was willing to wait if it meant I could get a waterproofed iPhone.

Hey Quinn,

Its Alex, you did an interview with me at CES. We are pushing your device threw either today or tomorrow. Because of the major traffic we received from your interview and many others at CES, we are slammed. Which is a good problem to have, but what I'm contacting you about is to get you taken care of. Taking care of our customers is our #1 priority. What we are willing to do is give you a free treatment. Ill void your transaction and you can still fallow your device when its going threw our process. I hope this situation dose not make you loose your faith in liquipel. Just understand we are doing what we can, working around the clock to get caught up. 

Thanks for everything, if you need to contact me this is my personal email. Much faster than the one from the site due to massive amounts of emails!

---

Alex Hill

Operations Manager

Alright, that's more like it!  Not only are they putting my phone through the Liquipel process, but they also are offering to refund me in addition to treating my phone—free service.  Now, I emailed Alex back telling him there was no need to cancel my order and that I was more than happy to pay for the service.

Now, is Liquipel taking care of me simply because I'm part of the press with a relatively large following?  Yes, I suppose it's possible; however, I think Liquipel is treating every paying customer with the same respect and going head-over-heels to make sure they're happy with the service.  Most companies would refund, but very few would be willing to offer the service for free.  It shows that Liquipel is not a faceless company—they're actual people that understand their customer's frustrations, hit some unexpected fame and attention at CES—and are working around the clock to get things fixed for current and future customers.

Congrats Liquipel, I haven't even tested your actual product out yet, and I already like you.