A tale of great customer service

Last year, at Valentine's day, my mother-in-law bought our daughter a pink, stuffed cat. Pinky, as he's been named, is my daughter's "favorite and best!" Pinky sleeps with her every night and comes down every morning to sit with her as she has breakfast or watches TV. Out of the last four show-and-tells at school, she has taken Pinky to show off four times. I'm not exactly sure how to make this clear to you, but....

She really loves this cat!

My wife and I live in terror of the day something happens to Pinky. Since we got our new dog, we've found she has a fondness for chewing on stuffies. Since he is well loved each day, Pinky spends a lot of time in the washing machine and has lost a lot of his luster. You can see this clearly in this picture with him and a not-so-loved sibling.



So, on a whim, we decided to look around some to see if we could find another kitty just like Pinky we could keep on hand as a "spare". Now, we know clearly that should we need to replace Pinky, it isn't going to be a one for one swap. She'd know immediately it wasn't him. Our planned cover story is that Pinky's brother came to town to be her friend since Pinky got lost. Or, something like that.

After poking around for a few, I decided one night to just look at Pinky's tag. Sure enough, the name of the company, Galerie USA, was there along with a URL. Score! I was a little discouraged at first as it appeared they might not deal directly with individuals, but figured I'd drop them a line all the same.

I relayed basically the same story to them as I have now to you and a day later I got an e-mail back from someone in customer service with a picture attached of a stuffed pink cat. She wanted to know if this was him, and if so they could help us out right away. It wasn't the Pinkster, so I sent her one of what's left of our boy (note: see the above picture again). The next day, they replied right back with a picture of a brand new Pinky!

I replied that was our kitty and offered to pay however necessary to get him in hand and was told...nope, thanks, just send us your address, we'll send him out to you. Wow! When I sent the address, though, they told us they were sending...well, let's just go to the picture...



Yup, that's Pinky, second from the left, surrounded by THREE siblings! They sent us THREE! They arrived today and are waiting patiently for the day they can come out of their box in the closet (our second daughter is arriving next month, perhaps she will one day get her own Pinky).

Now, granted, this was a small gesture and probably cost them all of $2 to do this, but that's not the point. Joni, the lady I dealt with spent a couple of days e-mailing me back and forth trying to find the right toy and then shipped them out within minutes of confirming we had the right one. It made a big difference to this dad to know there are potentially a couple of future tears that could be avoided by our having something to fill the void should it ever come, and that means the world to me.

Thank you, Galerie, and especially Joni, for helping us out. You got 2012 off to a great start for us!