Freebie-Man: Xbox 360 and Pizza (Blagman Undercover)

Rather than rely on the Blagman name for freebies I from time to time go undercover. In doing so I can see which companies are willing to give something away without the promise of a free review, those companies that truly value their customers.
Both of the products in this review, were gleamed thanks to some rather excellent customer service, and I hold these two examples high as companies that were prepared to shell out of their own pockets when something went wrong:

Microsoft Xbox 360
For all intents and purposes I shouldn’t have an Xbox 360 right now. It should be sat in a scrap yard somewhere doomed to never work again. The reason is below:

A cat? Yes my rather ingenious cat Pepper is responsible for exploding my Xbox. How? Well hearing the device making its usual grinding and hoping to not have my system overheat I pulled it out from under my TV, only for Pepper to walk on top of it. Instantly a loud grinding sound could be heard and three red rings appeared on the device signalling the death of the console. After trying a ridiculous trick involving overheating the console with a towel, and giving it a week to rest I decided it was time to bite the bullet and pay for a repair.

So I rang Xbox customer support hoping they would be able to assist in my hour of need. Taking my card details down they asked me to send it in the post, paw-prints and all. So I did, and after a week they sent me back a replacement once again working and without a single charge to my card. With the console was a note from Microsoft apologising for the console breaking as well as a voucher for one months’ free online gaming.

So it seems ‘acts of cat’ are covered under warranty....

Domino’s Pizza
My love for Pizza is well known and alongside making my own I also opt for the occasional take away. We’ve used various Dominos over the years and found our favourite is a Pizza called ‘The Meteor’ which has been discontinued but is something most Domino’s still know how to make up on request.

So we put in our request only to arrive and find a ‘Mighty Meaty’ in its place. After opening its box the manager could see my distress, and realising his staff on the phone was a complete muppet he promptly created a new pizza for us free of charge and even provided us with the original Mighty Meaty (which I must confess was also bloody nice).

What made this slightly nicer is it was only the third time we had used to store so there was no built up brand loyalty, and we could in all fairness have been the ones to make a mistake. These two examples show the importance of free products when something goes awry and the increased customer satisfaction it can bring.

After my Xbox broke I was all but ready to pack it in and stick to my Wii, likewise there’s no shortage of pizza places to choose from, but thanks to clever use of free products I am now a convert to both brands and will be for a long time to come.