We love REI

Really good customer service is hard to come by these days. Actually - it seems that adequate customer service is hard to come by - really good is damn near impossible.

We have shopped at REI for a few years, we are members there and have always been satisfied with our purchases. Trevor bought a heart rate monitor there last year and was told by the salesman that it was good for triathlons and would work in the water. It never has. That has always bothered Trevor, but he never took the time to take it back, he just used it on land and tried not think about the fact that he paid $200 for something that didn't do what he wanted.

On Friday, I purchased a Polar heart rate monitor from a guy who is part of our marathon training group. He spent almost two hours with us going over the software and all the information you can get from my heart rate monitor. It is an amazing tool to help with training. I can complete a workout and then download the information onto our computer where it shows just about every measurement you could want. I am so excited to use it to fine tune my training. I used it for the first time yesterday and it worked in the water, on the bike and on the run.

Trevor keeps telling me how envious he is because his monitor doesn't do what it is supposed to do. Today, we went back to REI to see if we could exchange his for one like mine. They don't stock the one that I have and so they gave us back a full refund. To my debit card. We didn't ask them to do that - they offered to do that. I was shocked. Seriously, shocked. It has been more than a year since we bought that thing. Wow.

We left there saying that anytime they have what we are wanting to buy - we'll buy it there. We'll also tell everyone we know about their customer service. They did more than they needed to do. This gives us the confidence to shop there, knowing that they want us to be satisfied, no matter what.

So, whatever you are looking for....look here first:
www.rei.com