I had blogged on December 7th about my amazing customer service interaction with Spire USA when I had a minor problem with my new Spire Viro courier bag.  The agent (Jessica) said my new bag would ship out on the 10th.  I received it today, which is spot-on in terms of expected ground shipping time from Massachussets to Seattle.

The best part, aside from the replacement bag, is the refreshing lack of hoops I had to jump through with the RMA.  No self-affixing label, no having to write out a 19-digit alphanumeric string on the outside of the box, no exhaustive survey: just a simple “What happened?” followed by “What do you need us to do?”  One of the options for the second item was “Nothing – replacement has already been received.”

I see that the bureaucracy beast has not yet consumed the nice people at Spire.  Here’s hoping it never will.

Here’s the transcript of the Live Chat session I had with Jessica from Spire customer service: the only edit I made was to X out the order number:

Your session reference number is 203476812
Jessica entered chat session
Jessica Hi Anthony
Jessica Do you have your order number?
You One sec
You XXXXX
Jessica Thanks
Jessica Just one minute
You sure
Jessica We’d be happy to replace it for you.
You wow
You thanks
You how do I do that?
Jessica We’ll ship you out a replacement and include a return label in the box for you to ship the defective back to us.
You that’s awesome
You thank you
Jessica Same shipping address?
You yes
Jessica Great. It will ship out first thing Monday morning.
You thank you very much. Wonderful customer service.
Jessica Thanks Anthony.
Jessica Have a great weekend!
You u 2
You bye!
Jessica Bye!
Jessica left chat session

I will do business with this company again, and will refer my friends, my family, and buy their items as gifts for my team. Excellent, quick, friendly service.

I’ve had this bag for about a week now:

This is the Viro (pronounced VIE-roe, not VEER-o) from Spire, based out of the People’s Republic of Boulder. It’s a small courier bag, and fits my XPS M1330 just fine. It may even be an inch or so larger than I need, but it’s a nice compact bag.

Pros:

• Light
• Un-fussy
• Looks great

Cons:

• The padding is a little thin compared to the beast of a Brenthaven I had before for my Inspiron 9300.
• The shoulder strap doesn’t rotate/swivel, so I’m constantly flipping it back on itself to make it straight
• The main flap buckle slips, loosening the tightness of the bag
• It would be cool if the external water bottle pocket were a bit deeper, or had a flap to cover it — I use it for my AC adapter.

Overall? I’m very satisfied. It’s a nice-looking, lightweight bag for my nice-looking, lightweight laptop.

UPDATE November 8, 2007: After another week, I can say a few more things:

• As far as size goes, I want to rephrase my remark earlier about how “it may even be an inch or so larger than I need.”  The reality is: it could be an inch shorter in width, but not in height.  The XPS M1330 is a bit deeper, but narrower, than the reference MacBook, for which this bag was probably designed.
• My wife thinks it looks like a “dog’s backpack.”  That’s because it’s so small and trim.  Or something.