2 Texans Down Under

Having written negatively about a corporation, Comcast, in my last blog, I now have something positive to say about a corporation that seems to be providing surprisingly fine customer service.

The company is Portable on Demand Storage or PODS and I was pleasantly surprised in my dealings with them more than two years ago and again last Saturday.

When Kristi and I were in the process of getting ready to move from Oklahoma to Australia in 2005, we investigated places to store some household goods we didn’t want to part with and couldn’t afford to ship down under.

That’s when we learned about PODS, a company that will bring a large metal box with a door on it (8 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 10-12 feet deep, perhaps) to your house, park it in your driveway so you can load it and then padlock it, come back for it at an appointed time, take it to their warehouse, and store it as long as you keep paying their monthly fee or until you ask them to ship it somewhere.

Now we’re planning a trip back to the US to visit, and we wanted to arrange to check our “pod,” to see that Kristi’s grandmother’s furniture is still okay and maybe to take out a few small things that we’d like to have with us when we return to Brisbane.

Wanting to set up an appointment to do that, I went to the PODS web site in search of a phone number. I’d been disappointed to see that no company phone number shows up on the contract we signed and brought with us. No luck at the web site, either. The only number I could find there was for an Australian PODS office.

I could have signed in on the web site, but I couldn’t recall my pin number, or even that I’d been given a pin number. When I requested the pin be sent to my email address, I got a message saying my email address was not recognized.

Typical corporation, I thought. They don’t want people calling them. I’ll have to make a local call to see if I can get a US number to call so I can try to sort all this out.

I was, then, already half way to grouchy and expecting to have to leave a message on voice mail when an Australian woman took my call last Saturday morning on the first or second ring. I explained what I wanted. I told her about my unknown pin number and gave her my customer number from the contract.

She asked me a few questions to verify my identity. She gave me my pin number. Then she shocked me. She asked me what day would be best for scheduling our visit to see our pod in Oklahoma City.

I was amazed. In five minutes, on a weekday morning, a PODS employee somewhere in Australia was ready to schedule a time for us to visit her company’s warehouse 8,000 miles away. We did that. “Your storage unit will be set out and waiting for you when you get there,” she promised.

I wish I’d written down her name. She was pleasant, helpful and efficient. She had a nice voice. In almost no time, I went from near-grouchy to nearly-smitten.

I have no financial interest in her company at all, but they seem to know they have a financial interest in me. Not much of one in corporate terms, of course, just $110 a month, US.

If our warehouse visit goes as smoothly as its scheduling did, though, I’ll be a word-of-mouth advertiser for PODS for a long time to come. So far, PODS seems to be anything but comcastic. — Bob

P.S. The PODS website I visited today has a phone number for potential customers, at least, something I didn’t find last week.