Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning at the gym. There's still a stone to shift before we can claim proximity to the upper limit of the "normal" weight category, so we're pounding the treadmill hard. Red faced and sweating, the only thing keeping us going is the added momentum provided by the sound of "California Uber Alles" being piped into the sides of our head via our relatively new JLab Audio headset, when disaster strikes! Intermittent sound in left ear plug!  Hold on, it's back ... gone again ... twiddle with the wire ... it's back ... nope gone again ... this is no good, Jello Biafra is sounding more like Norman Collier... That's it. It's all spoiled ...  our stride is officially lost ... sufficient excuse to stop and toddle off to the sauna. The "normal" weight category will not be troubled this week and it's all JLab Audio's fault.

So imagine our candor when we received a promotional email two days later from said "purveyors of shoddy goods" encouraging us to get an even better headset. Our polite and diplomatic response:

"I don't think I'll be bothering since the ones I've got have already gone on the blink"

>send ... that'll teach them. Cheek of it

But wait. Two minutes later, what's this in our inbox?

"Thank you for your quick response. I am sorry to hear that. Customer support is very important to me - if you look at my feedback at Amazon you can see that. I give my Customers a two year warranty for all my products so If your JBuds went bad so quickly I will certainly replace them free of charge for you. You could have send me an email about it and I would have taken care of it immediately. Let me make you this offer.. Instead of sending you a replacement for the JBuds I will send you a free Octone Groove earphone. It is of much better quality and has the additional adapters mentioned. If you like this Octone Groove maybe you could write a review about them on amazon.co.uk"

Shocked and stunned ... this sheds a whole new light on the matter. The unpleasant memories of Norman Collier rattling out "California Uber Alles" through his "hilarious" faulty microphone are being swept away by this offer. Seems genuinely bothered too. We like that. Let's not let him think too long about it .... time for a reply ...

"It's a deal. They only developed the problem at the weekend (the sound in the left ear is intermittent - a faulty connection in the plug I think). But I didn't think there was any point complaining. But I am very impressed with your response and will be very happy to record this in a review on amazon. I work in the field of "quality" so the topic is close to my heart. I will also make a little case study out of it and post it on my company blog"

... at this point the tears are welling up ... not only have we got our faulty buds replaced, but they are being replaced by a seemingly superior set. We didn't have to bundle them up and traipse to the post office with them either. Also there's tomorrow's blog entry sorted out into the bargain. A real customer satisfaction masterclass  and a lesson in customer perception turnaround. Thanks JLab