Kudos for Steiner

We have owned a pair of Steiner Commander III binoculars since 1996.  Anybody who has ever looked through these has always been amazed at just how nice these binoculars are. Recently we had the rubber protective coating become soft and mushy in one spot that left a blue goo on your fingers.  This is probably because they came into contact with something.  The compass light was also not working and there was a little fog on one of the lenses.  We decided to see if they could be fixed and went to the Steiner page.  Sure enough they fix them but it would take more than six weeks.  We were actively cruising at the time so when we went to the States we bought the new Commander XP or the newest version and sent ours in for repair to later use as a backup.

After 10 weeks of not hearing from them we contacted them and they said they were waiting on a part from Germany but we should have them soon.  Now in regular contact we asked if it would be possible to change the original return address from my mother’s house to friends of ours in Guam where we were going to be on a visa run and to please give us the cost for postage and repair.  We were advised there would be no charge and they could mail them off the next day, we were ecstatic.

We arrived in Guam to find our nearly 20 year old binoculars as good as new and were very happy.  Then recently nearly four months later we got a message that my mother had received a pair of binoculars.  We quickly contacted Steiner to let them know there had been some mistake as we had received our repaired pair, that maybe there was a mix up and someone else’s binoculars had been sent to us.  They thanked us for our honesty and shipped mom a free shipping label to return them.  Another week passed by and we heard from Steiner with thanks again for our honesty and explained that they figured out what had happened.  One of the parts they had ordered from Germany was supposedly no longer available.  So it went into the system to replace the binoculars with the nearest equivalent.  Somewhere along the way a spare part was found on the shelf and shipped.  Ours were repaired and shipped as described.  But the replacement was still in the works and that was shipped as well.  A bit of a mistake on Steiner’s part but it is nice to know they erred on the side of the customer in customer support.  Again we love these binoculars and now we think highly of the support behind them.