Every so often, Twitter surprises me. When you think you’ve had enough of the consultants, snake oil salesmen, link baiters and spammers, someone uses it to blow your socks off with great customer service. Drugstore.com just did that for me.

I make maybe two large orders a year from drugstore.com which is based in the US (and owned by Amazon I think). The main purchase is a generic OTC medicine which costs a ridiculous fortune in Ireland in branded form. But I also stock up on ibuprofen etc. Buying 250 of those for the same price as 24 in Ireland is all you need to know about the rip-off that this country remains.

Two weeks ago, running out of that OTC med, I put in another order. Something went wrong in their system and the order was never processed. So I attempted to do it again late last week. Suddenly my standard purchases were all coming up as “cannot deliver outside of USA”. I exploded. My meds were now run out, I was in deep discomfort and now I was stymied. So I lashed out on Twitter with some pretty (ok very) harsh language about them.

Within a few hours I got a message from one of their representatives on Twitter, asking if they could help. I explained the situation but assumed it was a dead-end and that their shipping policies had changed (or some Irish muppet civil servant had changed the rules here).

So imagine my total delight to receive an email this evening from them apologising profusely and explaining that it was a bug/error and should not have happened. I can now happily re-do my order.

It’s now a given that all companies should be monitoring their brand on Twitter but apart from small-medium companies who are already known to me, I’ve never had a major business  reach out to me like this. In fact I have purposely baited some Irish companies and they have studiously ignored me.

Now that my problem is sorted, I wholeheartedly recommend that you use drugstore.com to order from Ireland. Yes, the delivery/customs charges will initially shock you but it’s still cheaper than here and the trick is to order lots and lots (or buy for your family/friends too). They add Irish Customs charges at source so you won’t be gouged when the stuff arrives here.

Bravo drugstore.com, I hope we all learn to run our businesses like you.