Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S3E23 - Satisfaction Guaranteed

Episode Date: June 8, 2014

This week, we search for companies that offer 100%, no questions-asked, no fine print lifetime guarantees. They're hard to find, as not many companies are willing to offer that unlimited return policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 3, 2014. for the waiter that no, no, no!

You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with Austin. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Our bullseye tonight is all about a pantsuit, and I don't mean a woman's outfit. I'm talking about a story you may remember, the $54 million lawsuit filed by a man who said a dry cleaner had lost a pair of his trousers. In May of 2005, Roy Pearson dropped off a pair of gray pants at a dry cleaner in Washington, D.C. He had gained some weight and needed a waist alteration. That alteration was estimated at $10.50 and he was given a receipt.

When he went to pick up his pants a few days later, he claims the dry cleaner tried to give him the wrong pants, even though the paperwork matched the cleaner's records, the tags,

and Pearson's receipt. He then demanded the price of the pants as compensation, an amount just over $1,100. The dry cleaner refused, so Pearson filed a suit in the District of Columbia's Superior Court. A few extra details make this case interesting. First, Roy Pearson was a judge.

Second, he sued the dry cleaner for $54 million. And third, it was the sign in the window of the dry cleaner that he was taking exception to. It said, Satisfaction Guaranteed. The court case quickly drew international attention. The family who owned the dry cleaning company was overwhelmed by the scope of the lawsuit

and offered a settlement of $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000, but Pearson refused it all. The presiding judge in the case eventually ruled in favor of the dry cleaner, saying Pearson had not adequately proved the pants were not his, adding, She also ruled Pearson had to pay the dry cleaner's court costs.

Not long after, Roy Pearson ended up losing his job. According to the Washington Post, Pearson, who had served as a judge for two years, was up for another 10-year term, but a judicial committee voted against reappointing him. It took more than two years to settle the case that hung on the two words, satisfaction guaranteed. They are two of the most persuasive and hotly contested words in the world of marketing. Most products come with some form of guarantee. Ideally, it's supposed to instill trust and remove risk from purchase. Yet, more often than not, the guarantee is there solely to protect the manufacturer or retailer.

Today, we look at companies brave enough to offer no fine print, no questions asked, no time limit, no argument, 100% lifetime guarantees. Truth be told, they were hard to find, but they do exist. Their stories are inspiring, the belief in their products is unwavering, and the situations that arise as a result of their guarantees are sometimes astonishing. You're under the influence. There are many reasons that influence you to do business with a company. It might be convenience because their location is handy or close.

It might be cost. You've shopped around and you found the lowest price. It might be quality. You like the craftsmanship and design of the product. Or it might just be the guarantee. There are so many kinds of guarantees in the world. Some are limited, some are expansive, some are loaded with fine print and then there is the rarest kind,

the unconditional, lifetime, no questions asked guarantee. Not many companies have the confidence to tip everything in the customer's favor. Because an unconditional guarantee is not only one of the most powerful tools in marketing, it also creates hassles and enormous risk. For those reasons, the companies that still choose to offer it are an interesting study. In 1911, Leon Leon Wood Bean returned from a hunting trip with cold, wet feet. He lived in the woods of Maine, but wet feet were a persistent problem that always took the joy out of being outdoors.

And that problem gave him an idea. He found a cobbler and asked him to stitch long leather uppers to a pair of workman's rubber boots, so they extended to calf length. His new creation was a comfortable, functional boot, and he named it the Maine Hunting Shoe. Working out of the basement of his brother's apparel shop, Leon Leonwood, or L.L. Bean, good choice there,

crafted 100 pairs of his new boots. Next, he obtained a mailing list of Maine hunting license holders, sent them a mailer featuring his new boot, and guaranteed it to give perfect satisfaction in every way, noting it was developed by a hunter who had walked in the woods of Maine for 18 years. He sold all 100 pairs immediately, then promptly ran into a problem.

The rubber bottoms on the first 90 separated from the rest of the boot. Although it almost put him out of business, L.L. Bean kept his word and refunded the full purchase price to each customer. He then borrowed more money, fixed the problem, and sent out hundreds of new mailers to prospective customers. It was a galvanizing moment for L.L. Bean. He learned the value of personally testing his products,

the power of creating honest advertising based on firm convictions, and the importance of backing up your guarantee, whatever the cost. Customers responded to the integrity they saw in L.L. Bean, and his growing mail-order business allowed him to open a storefront in Freeport, Maine. His business grew quickly because L.L. Bean was a pioneer in customer service. To hear that one of his products failed

was a genuine shock to his system, as he felt the company had just let down a customer who had put faith in the catalog, and he did everything in his power to make it right. With the popularity of the automobile, more and more people began to visit Maine to hunt, camp, and fly fish. By 1934, the L.L. Bean factory had expanded to over 13,000 square feet, and the company was generating over 70% of the mail volume at the Freeport post office.

By 1937, the company surpassed the $1 million mark, an admirable feat, as the country was still in the grip of the Depression. In 1951, Bean decided to open the store 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, proclaiming,

We have thrown away the keys to the place, and to this day there are no locks on the flagship store. In 1967, L.L. Bean passed away at the age of 94, and his company wondered if they could go on without his strong influence. Then, as if on cue, over 50,000 letters of condolence began pouring in from customers all over the world. That overwhelming public response

inspired the company to continue with L.L. Bean's philosophy firmly in place. A huge part of that philosophy was contained in the unconditional guarantee L.L. Bean had established in 1919. It stated the company would stand behind every product for its expected lifetime. But here's the remarkable part of that guarantee. The expected lifetime was determined

not by the store, but by the customer. The wording was unqualified and said, Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. No restrictions, no limitations, no fine print, just a promise we've kept for over 100 years. One day, a customer came in wearing one of the store's expensive parkas he had owned for a long time.

He said he didn't like the pockets and wanted a refund. There was nothing wrong with the parka. He just didn't like the parka. So, the manager gave him a full refund, no questions asked. Another time, a man came in with tears in his shirt, made by a rescue team that had saved him at a car accident. The store gave him a new shirt. And every time something like that happened,

the L.L. Bean staff got another lesson in just how serious the company was about their unusual guarantee. By 1975, the return rates had doubled, but the L.L. Bean company considered that a good thing. It proved to customers that they were serious, and those customers became incredibly loyal to the store and spread the word far and wide. Today, the unconditional guarantee still stands and that philosophy helps the family-owned store generate revenues of over $1.5 billion a year. And if you want to read some of the letters

from happy, loyal customers, go to their website. There are 295 pages of comments there. I know. I counted. When a company offers an unconditional, no-questions-asked guarantee, it has to be ready to honor that policy, come what may.

Not long ago, the Fuller brush company got a call from a woman who said her brushes were showing signs of wear when fuller received the brushes they didn't recognize them at first then after some research they realized those particular fuller brushes were last made in 1920. But the company stood behind their guarantee and replaced the brushes with a smile. The fine print in some guarantees can also make for some interesting reading. A Dutch maker of toxic waste containers offers a lifetime guarantee

that would be voided in the event of a nuclear attack. A popular brand of sandals has a lifetime guarantee which does not include wear to the sole, torn straps, skateboard abuse, or any damage as a result of coming into contact with any moisture. What's left? Nuclear attack. The president of a small toy company offers a lifetime warranty on his toys qualified as, quote, my lifetime.

Most irons come with a limited warranty that contains one of my favorite fine print lines saying, do not iron clothes while wearing them. And the iTunes user agreement stipulates that, quote, you agree not to use the product in the development, design, manufacture, or production of nuclear, missile, chemical, or biological weapons. I kid you not. Then there are the amazing unconditional guarantees that tempt people to game the system.

And we'll be right back. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives, available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. In 1938, a store opened its doors by the name of REI, which stood for Recreational Equipment, Inc. It sells outdoor equipment and apparel with 130 locations today. Like L.L. Bean, it too has always had an unconditional lifetime guarantee. But after 75 years of a no-questions-asked return policy, it changed its guarantee in

2013. It's now limited to one year. REI felt too many customers were taking advantage of them. They saw an upsurge in questionable returns, like fire-singed tents and well-used baby carriages. One woman returned a pair of sandals designed for hiking and wading in rivers, citing them quote, not sexy enough. Another customer returned a backpack he had purchased in 2004, saying it was old and dirty and he didn't like it anymore.

Customers started buying old REI items at yard sales and on eBay and returning them for full cash refunds, effectively using the store as an ATM. When the company started seeing people online give REI nicknames like Return Every Item and Rent Every Item, they decided to instigate the change to their guarantee the management said the store no longer wanted to look into the eyes of their customers and have to judge the morality of their

return you almost can't blame them them. As I mentioned earlier, there are many different kinds of guarantees, and many good companies offer excellent ones. Tilly Endurables offers a lifetime warranty on their hats, for example. Canada Goose offers a lifetime guarantee on their coats. Mountain Equipment Co-op offers a satisfaction guaranteed warranty. Zippo Lighters says it will repair any lighter,

regardless of age, at no cost. Harry Rosen offers a lifetime maintenance guarantee on their clothing. Craftsman Tools offers a lifetime guarantee

on some of their hand tools, but not all of them. All good companies, all excellent products, but each hedges their bets just a little, with caveats like excludes normal wear and tear, and you must be the original owner,

or that the product will be either replaced or repaired at the discretion of the company, etc. All reasonable exclusions, mind you, but not 100% fine print free. Darn Tough Vermont is a company that only makes one product, socks. The company started in 1978 as Cabot Hosiery Mills and built its business by manufacturing private label socks for big companies like The Gap, Eddie Bauer, and Banana Republic. But around 2003, those companies started canceling their contracts one by one after finding cheaper

hosiery suppliers overseas. Cabot Hosiery started defaulting on their loans and had to find a way to survive. The solution was interesting. Instead of trying to sell socks wholesale for $2.50 a pair, they went upscale and tried to create the best sock on the market. They called the new line of socks Darn Tough Vermont.

With experimentation and using their 35 years of experience, they developed a sock made of a remarkable 1,441 stitches per square inch. The socks are designed to wick away the moisture a foot's 250,000 sweat glands produce, and Darn Tough says its socks can withstand 30,000 rubs from a test machine, seven times more than the next best brand the company is so

confident in its product it offers an unconditional lifetime guarantee that states if you're not 100% happy return them for a new pair or a full refund no strings no conditions no fine print for. A very telling sign hangs in the darn tough mill that reminds their employees why they do what they do. It says, Nobody ever outsourced anything for quality. It brings up the inevitable burden of unconditional guarantees that they put tremendous pressure on a company's quality

control. But as Darn Tough Vermont CEO Rick Cabot says, if you're really serious about the quality of your product, you make it yourself. It's hard to argue with that philosophy. By implementing that no fine print guarantee, Darn Tough Vermont overcame near bankruptcy and within five years became the number two brand in the specialty sock category in the U.S., selling over four million pairs of Darn Tough socks a year. And by the way, only 0.002% get returned. As Rick Cabot says,

the only hole in a darn tough sock is the one you slip your foot into. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes.

New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca Back in 1963, a former advertising copywriter named Gary Kummer decided to start a mail-order sailboat equipment company in Chicago. He was an avid sailor, so he and his partner started a company called Lands End. The first thing they did was put together the company's catalog. It featured 84 pages of products and a major typo on the cover.

The apostrophe on Lands was placed after the S instead of before it. But they couldn't afford to change it. So the company became known as LANDS' End. While it took other companies weeks to deliver a catalog order, founder Gary Kummer insisted that LANDS' End would ship it within two days. By 1977, it was a million-dollar business. The company eventually moved to Wisconsin

and expanded its offering to include casual clothing, luggage, and home furnishings. Gary Kummer's philosophy was to provide superb service, an excellent product at a fair price, and to back it up with an unconditional lifetime guarantee that stated, if you're not satisfied, return the item for an exchange or full refund. We mean every word of it.

Whatever, whenever, always. But to make sure this is perfectly clear, we've decided to simplify it further. Guaranteed. Period. It was a promise that didn't mince words. And to this day, returns are accepted, no questions asked. As a promotional idea for Christmas in 1984, the store decided to buy an old black London taxi cab,

fill it with $1,000 worth of lands and gifts, and put it on the cover of their catalog. The inside description said it was for sale for $20,000. A woman in Kansas purchased it immediately. But the story doesn't end there. 21 years later, in 2005, the lady in Kansas called Land's End and wanted to return the London cab for a full refund.

So Land's End honored their unconditional guarantee, took the cab back and gave her a full refund, no questions asked. That cab is now used at head office to shuttle staff around the Lands End campus. But that's not their best lifetime guarantee story. In 1991, the company expanded to the UK, Japan and Germany. When they mailed out their first catalog in Germany, stating their unconditional no-fine-print lifetime guarantee, a group of 1,600 big and small German merchants,

called the Association of Unfair Competition, sued Land's End. They claimed the guarantee violated a German law that banned retailers from offering gifts to entice customers. Land's End refused to back down, but eventually lost the case. Undaunted, the company decided to have fun with that ruling. They began running ads in the rest of Europe that said,

Introducing a guarantee so good, the Germans banned it. In Germany, they just blacked out the guarantee in their print ads, which stirred up even more interest. Then, German customers began rallying around the company. Eventually, German lawmakers revoked the ban on lifetime guarantees, and Land's End was finally able to offer their guarantee on one condition, that it was unconditional. Tom Waits once sang that what the large type giveth, the small type taketh away. But that's not always the case.

There are fine companies out there who don't rely on fine print. L.L. Bean learned the value of a lifetime guarantee with his very first disastrous product launch. Land's End knew that honoring a lifetime satisfaction pledge would speak to their philosophy louder than any advertising ever could, even if that meant refunding the cost of a taxi 21 years after the sale. It also goes without saying that a company offering a lifetime guarantee has to make a product that can live up to that promise, as the Fuller Brush Company demonstrated when it happily replaced a set of 90-year-old brushes. The smartest companies also use their simply worded guarantees as a competitive advantage,

like Darn Tough Vermont, whose straightforward, loophole-free guarantee not only saved the company, it blew the socks off the competition. It has been said that, as a business practice, an unconditional guarantee is expensive. But as advertising, it's cheap. Nothing provokes positive word-of-mouth more far and wide

than a solid 100% lifetime no questions asked return policy. That's why you might have noticed all the guarantees you heard here today have one thing in common. They are all gloriously lawyer-free. Because in the end, it's not the guarantee that's the problem, it's the asterisks when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Hi, Terry.

Just wanted you to know that I guarantee I'll always remain a loyal 100% lifetime listener to Under the Influence. Provided you never change the theme music, you never stop talking about marketing, you never stop talking about advertising, you always air at the same time, and you agree to continue podcasting. Have a nice day. Under the Influence was produced at Pirate Toronto.

Sound engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Series Coordinator, Debbie O'Reilly. Research, Tanya Moryusuf. Feel free to follow me on Twitter at Terry O'Influence. Okay, I won't beat around the bush. I like the cut of your jib. And your jib would look even better in an Under the Influence t-shirt.

You'll find them on our shop page at terryoreilly.ca slash shop. See you next week. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A.