How RoadRunner Sports Turned a Negative into a Positive: A Quick, Unsolicited Plug

Remember when a bag of my stuff got stolen a few weeks ago? In addition to my jewelry, that included a whole bunch of running gear as well. I’ve been working with the hotel and the police to figure out what happened to all my stuff, but I’ve pretty much realized that it’s gone forever and I really ought to start the process of replacing it. On the running front, that means finding some new headphones (luckily, my extra pairs of Earhoox at home make this a cheap and easy process), choosing a new fuel belt (still haven’t done that and am making do with the surprisingly ample pockets of most of my Athleta running skirts), and buying a new wristwatch GPS to replace my trusty Garmin 405 that I’ve had ever since I started running.

Since I was waiting to see what would happen with the police investigation to actually start the buying process, I ran my last marathon without a GPS watch of any kind. No fun! I wished I knew where I was on the course in between the mile markers, especially since the mile markers turned out to be way off (and we ran a 27.4 mile marathon). But at the beginning of this week, I realized I couldn’t wait any longer.  Enter RoadRunnerSports.

I picked RoadRunner Sports mostly because of the price. Although most places offered my chosen Garmin Forerunner 210 for about $200, RoadRunner Sports had some great promos – a 10% discount and “warp speed” shipping within two hours of my order if I paid just $1.99 for a VIP program. Good deal! I sent the order through on Monday, upgrading to 2-3 day shipping so that my watch would arrive by Thursday at the latest, just in time for the Country Music Marathon on Saturday.

Today, I went to check my order status – and saw that despite the “warp speed” promise, my order hadn’t shipped until late last night, and now was not going to arrive in Dallas until Friday night, when I’d already be in Nashville. No bueno. I contacted RoadRunner Sports’ customer service and began explaining all this to the chat agent. He told me that the VIP program didn’t go through as part of my order. As a result, I hadn’t received the warp speed shipping (so it went out 24 hours later instead of 2 hours later), and that I had been charged an extra $27 from what the invoice said when I hit “submit.”

WHAT?!

As I started getting upset and wondering “how could this be?!”, he disconnected. I tried to re-enter the chat, but was repeatedly told by the system that it was after hours and that their chat service was only open until 4pm PST. But it’s only 2pm PST? Jumping to conclusions (HE’S AVOIDING ME!), I took to Twitter to air my frustration.

Within minutes, I had a rep from RoadRunner Sports contacting me via Twitter (to let me know that their system had too many people on it and that’s why I was getting the “no agents can assist you” after hours message), and then sending several speedy emails to do everything possible to resolve the problem. She fixed the billing issue, spoke to a supervisor and granted me complimentary VIP status, and also canceled my first order and had a new order headed straight to my hotel in Nashville – all within minutes. No hours on hold on the phone; just quick Tweets and emails to get it resolved even better than I would have hoped. This is how more companies should behave, and I am so grateful for RoadRunner Sports’ service!

It’s often said that we have a natural tendency to share our bad experiences before our good experiences, and I admit that I was very quick to air my initial frustration on Twitter. However, I’d like to remedy that and be one of those happy customers who actually shares their good experiences too. I realize it’s not Friday yet and that things could still go wrong in transit, but RoadRunner Sports’ fast resolution and eagerness to help me has completely redeemed them in my eyes. If anything, the problems have made me an even more satisfied customer. I know that mistakes happen, but RoadRunner Sports has gained my trust and confidence. I trust that if anything does arise from here on out, they’ll be ready to look out for me and do whatever they can to fix it. Thanks, RoadRunner Sports!

*Note: I was in no way compensated for any of this review by RoadRunner Sports, and paid my own money for the watch/shipping/etc. The only freebie I received was the VIP service and change in shipping, as described in this experience.