Just when you think great customer service has gone the way of the dinosaur, something comes along to renew one's faith in such things.
I had this rare and glorious experience this week (yesterday, in fact).
Ok, some background - I have had a lot of printed circuit boards made over the years, and I use ExpressPCB. They offer a good service including providing design software for schematics and for laying out the PC boards themselves. The board quality is very good, and the prices are reasonably competitive. ExpressPCB offers several types of services, depending on what you're doing.
I used ExpressPCB for the initial run of boards used in the recently released software modulation monitor, and used their "protopro" service, which is 4 boards of up to a specified size. I was able to fit the mod monitor circuit onto each board 3 times, so I ended up with 12 actual units. The turn around time is fast, and the setup cost is significantly reduced from the "production" service. It's perfect for prototypes. Everything was perfect as usual, and needless to say, this initial run of monitors sold out immediately.
I recently ordered a reasonably large quantity of boards from ExpressPCB for the same project using their "Production" service. The delivery time for this service is generally 12 business days (10 for manufacturing the boards, and 2 for shipping).
Here's where the great service comes in! I sent an email to customer support saying, if they happened to have a lull in their production schedule, or whatever, that I could really use the boards ahead of schedule. I did not pressure them in any way, nor did I really expect ExpressPCB to be able to meet my request, since I know they are fairly busy. This is not the sort of thing I generally do, since I know all about production schedules, and who really wants some customer coming along asking for special favors, etc. and am therefore sympathetic to their position.
SURPRISE! The boards will arrive tomorrow (Friday), MORE THAN A WEEK AHEAD OF SCHEDULE and less than a week turn around !!!! Needless to say, this is really a help. Immediateliy, I sent a VERY nice thank-you to ExpressPCB.
I just wanted to let everyone know about this great company. Good service should be reported! We tend to report bad service, but how many of us report great service?
Faith restored (at least for today)