I’m not sure if this is any longer the case but I’ve heard that Leatherman, despite “only” having a 25 year guranee will pretty much repair/replace any of their multitools you send them no matter how old.
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”
It still is as far as I know
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.
I thought few minutes to question. And honestly were wasn’t a brand that i can recommend without any reservations.
Feddit.org technically meets the criteria. Along with many other Lemmy servers.
But as far as brands that sell consumer goods, it’s slim pickings. Most of them end up going out of business and/or getting bought up by investors/competitors.
Los Pollos Hermanos where customer satisfaction is guaranteed
My second cousin’s boyfriend worked for them doing overnight shipping. Loved the company so much, he started working at the main branch in Mexico. Left in the middle of the night though. Also left his kid and girlfriend. The owner was really cool though. Felt so bad he gave her $15k for the trouble.
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.
Steam.
You mean the company that makes money from getting children addicted to gambling?
Meh, having experienced their deny and defend customer service, I’m not impressed. If there is no way to escalate an issue beyond someone who refuses to pull their head out of their own ass long enough to see an issue objectively, you’re stuck and there’s no recourse.
Only partially and only to certain customers
Yup, Valve is still in it for the money of course, but the customer really does come first. I’ve used their support a few times and they’ve always been stellar. I will always buy Valve products.
Yeah, shoulda said Valve, rather than Steam.
I do like Valve and their products, but I can’t ignore that they know they have an underage gambling issue and have done nothing to fix it.
Here’s a coffeezilla video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y
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.
Inherently all brands care about profit as they need money to function but I get what you mean.
I’m generally not one for brand loyalty but if you need a motorcycle you really can’t go wrong with any Yamaha and if you need a knife Benchmade has been unbelievably good to me even when I send it ones with snapped off tips years after purchase to get repaired/replaced.
Inherently all brands
All publicly traded brands…
Believe it or not even private ones still need to to make money to keep working. Granted they aren’t trying to also make extra money to keep investors happy.
All brands and businesses are trying to make money. The question is are they also trying to buy a third yatch or are they just happy with being able to give all their employees a good raise and Christmas bonus every year.
All brands and businesses are trying to make money
But only publicly traded ones will trade the brand recognition they’ve built for short term profits…
Investors care about quarterly growth, which literally cannot keep constantly increasing.
A private company could have a flat dollar goal for yearly profit. And not give a shit if that number goes up 100k a year at the detriment to long term profits
I thought that didn’t need explaining, but I can admit when I’m wrong.
For the prices Benchmade is asking for their wares they better damn well have a great after sales lol
I’m not in the US though so paying that much extra for a warranty that they’ll most likely not cover is moot personally
Agree on Yamaha bikes though. They are aplenty here in my country along with Honda. Can go anywhere to get parts and repairs
Needing money to function isn’t profit, those are operating costs… Profit is the money leftover after all costs to make and manufacture something has been paid.
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.
Costco, Bosch
Agreed with Costco… and used to agree with Bosch… until seeing this recent video.
The only quality Bosch product I’ve used is windscreen wipers. Every other tool or appliance has been pretty average in terms of quality.
When I go into a Costco, I take a minute to look at the board showing the pictures names of long-time employees. At my local one, they have about 15 people who have been working there for over 30 years.
Met a woman who had been a Costco employee for 25 years. In addition to everything else, she got 6 weeks of paid holidays a year. How many other retail employers come anywhere close to that?
Dean’s Beans coffee. The owner was an amazing guy, fair trade, all that. When he stepped down, he handed ownership to the employees.
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
Seems like these guys: https://nubo.coop/en/
They provide email, calendar, contacts, and cloud storage.
On their mission statement page they explicitly have:
not seeking to enrich shareholders
In France, we have this : https://cestquilepatron.com/
The concept is that customers are asked questions to make a new product that satisfies them. For example, they want to sell apples. They will ask in what country they should buy them, how well the farmer should be paid, what size… and you see in real time how it affects the price. Then, the product will be sold in supermarkets at that price
There is also mutual insurance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance
Where can you buy these products in France?
In grocery stores
Is it in larger supermarkets like Intermarché/Leclerc? I’ll look for it next time I’m over there
Yes
You can see it at carrefour, monoprix, leclerc, intermarché…
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.
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.
