When it comes to customer service, everyone talks a good game. But Amazon delivered — even when the Post office didn’t.

Brief recap: An Amazon customer’s purchases were shipped, but lost en route by the Post Office. Amazon not only replaced the packages, but upgraded the shipping to one day delivery so it would arrive in time for Christmas. Via The Consumerist

Sure, Amazon still has a few faults, and may screw up now and then. But this is the kind of “above-and-beyond” service that cements loyalty among its customers.

What about your company? Are you doing anything (everything?) to make sure your customers are delighted — even when the problem originated outside your company and was beyond your control?

What could you start doing that you’re not?

In this corner… Apple’s iPhone. High-status. Prestige. Pricey.

And in this corner… Wal-Mart. Low price leader. Low status. Place to buy commodities and cheap bargains.

If the gossip is true and Apple starts selling iPhones in Wal-Mart stores, possibly (but not likely) for $99, what happens next?

What happens when these two powerful brands meet? Will Apple lift Wal-Mart’s image, or will Wal-Mart drag down Apple’s? Will the super-hip fling their iPhones away in disgust and start shopping for a Blackberry instead?

Stay tuned. Somebody’s brand is gonna get dented — or polished.

What do you think? Will uber-marketer Steve Jobs manage to turn what seems to be a frog into a handsome (and lucrative) prince? Or is he heading for the ditch? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It had to happen. Illinois’ vacant Senate seat is now up for bid on eBay — just as it was in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office.

Of course, the bleeping bigmouth may be too bleeping busy to handle the transaction himself. As one of the funnier auction listings warns, “Please be advised I will be away from my office for a while (maybe long term)…”

So far I haven’t heard any commentator use the best word to describe this pol’s behavior: “hubris.” In ancient Greek tragedy, hubris was the hero’s “fatal flaw,” the thing that trips him up and brings about his inevitable downfall. Hubris is exactly the kind of pride and cocky arrogance that the governor displayed in his wiretapped conversations.* Was he delusional? He certainly seemed to believe he just couldn’t get caught. He practically taunted the feds to bust him.

That’s hubris, baby. And as the musical “All that Jazz” put it, that’s Chicago politics, too!

*Speaking of which, how long till the tapes of his wiretapped conversations go up for bid on eBay?

— UPDATE: I’ve been trumped by the wordsmiths at NPR. They described the Illinois governor using both “hubris” and “chutzpah,” thus adding alliteration (the repetition of the “hoo” sounds at the start of each word. (FYI, the “ch” in “chutzpah” is pronounced like an “h”). I stand humbled by their cleverness… (damn them).

An Australian study has found that txtngs fstr till sum1 trys 2 rd it. Um, I think they mean that using abbreviations and shorthand makes it much faster to write text messages — but twice as long for the poor recipient to read and understand them.

Writing can be a lot of fun. That’s why texting and Twitter and blogs are so popular. Everyone feels a natural human urge to communicate. It’s especially easy and fun when you’re just messing around, if it doesn’t really matter whether anyone actually reads and understands what you’re trying to say. In other words, writing is fun when results don’t matter.

But when something important is on the line, when your writing has to explain, entertain or persuade, when it has to deliver a return on your investment of time and money, writing is a lot harder. That’s why clients pay thousands of dollars for a good sales letter (or its online equivalent, a landing page). If the sales message is well-written and persuasive, the client stands to make many times that amount.

“Easy writing means hard reading,” said Samuel Johnson. In other words, getting and holding the attention of an overworked, multi-tasking, distracted reader is a wee bit tougher than knocking out another quick tweet. Trying to persuade someone to actually do what you want them to do? Now you’re into some really tough terrain.

Don’t believe me? Try writing a note that will convince your kids to go to bed on time when you’re not home. Try explaining to a co-worker how to perform a semi-complex process. Try convincing someone to vote for you, or why they should buy from you rather than your competitor. Then see how easy writing is.

Believe me, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from writing. Quite the opposite. The problem is, good writing fools us. It seduces us all. Good writing makes it look easy. How many times have you thought as you’re reading a book, article or ad, “That’s the perfect way to express it. But it’s so obvious. How else could you possibly say it?”

What most people don’t realize is how long the writer might have sweated and struggled to get it to that point. How many drafts and revisions she might have written and rejected before the work evolved to that “so perfect it’s obvious” status.

Next time someone tells you it’s easy and fun to write, ask to read something they’ve written. See how easy and fun it is to read.

How bad is the auto business? So bad that a dealer in Europe is offering two-for-one: Buy one car, get a second one free.

How can he afford it? Distributors in southern Europe have been so desperate to get cars off their lots that they were selling them at huge discounts.

From a marketing standpoint, two-for-one is far better than simply cutting the price of the first car. Helps alleviate overcrowding on the lot, too. And all the publicity he’s getting for this stunt doesn’t hurt, either.

But is it working?

Cardoen’s eight showrooms had seen more than 10 times their usual number of visitors since the promotion began. “People have been coming in from all over Belgium and abroad,” said Cardoen’s Commercial Director Ivo Willems.

So people are coming in to kick the tires, and maybe stare at the crazy person who’s giving away free cars. But are they actually buying any? Um, not yet. Willems admits they’ve yet to see an impact on sales.

But at least they’re trying something new. And wisely using free publicity to spread the word. How is your business coping with the economic crisis?