Ever since I spotted my first Island Ink-Jet kiosk at Mayfair Mall in Victoria, BC, I’ve been taking my ink cartridges to Island Ink-Jet to be refilled.

Now living in Burnaby, I used to frequent the Metrotown Mall location, before it picked up and moved all the way to Langley. In my search for a new location, I found Nick; tucked into an upstairs corner at The Bay at Lougheed Mall on the border of Coquitlam, a full 12 minute drive from my home office.

Recently, my printer has been acting up, and finally my black ink cartridge started showing the caution symbol, a clear indication that it was time to make the trek to get it refilled. I took it to Nick, and later I was inserting it and printing a test page.

No ink! This, dear friends, was not good news. Back to Lougheed with me, and there’s Nick with a solution: pay the difference, and take an additional brand new cartridge, in case his re-setting of the existing one was to no avail. If this works, I thought- I’ll have two full cartridges! The celebration was short lived, as neither would put forth that precious ink I’ve come to depend on; except of course for dripping it all over my fingers as I fumbled with the cartridges.

Obviously, either I’m doing something horribly wrong, or my printer is faulty. I presume the latter to be true, and my 3-in-1 printer is now marked to become landfill fodder. (Anybody think they can resurrect it?) No matter, as after a quick call to Nick, he assured me that if I brought the (now used) cartridge back, I’d get a full refund.

For Nick’s sake and my own, I wish that I wasn’t still having difficulty with my printer- although my experience in dealing with him made me realize that his level of customer service was definitely worth mentioning. After dealing with me, Nick has nothing more than a used ink cartridge and ink on his own hands since I became his customer; due to the refund he has yet to make a penny off me.

But he has done one thing- he’s secured a faithful customer, who will willingly drive to Lougheed Mall for service that I know is worth the trip!

Great marketing is in those little details:

• Making decisions based on what’s good for the customer
• The “9th Refill free” cards for your wallet
• The small print-out featuring tips on how to preserve the environment through recycling cartridges that was stapled to the small baggie carrying my refill.

Thanks, Nick. I’ll back just as soon as my new printer needs fuel.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 10:43 pm and is filed under marketing, word of mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.