Customer service. That is a concept that some excel with while a number of other companies let it fall be the wayside. For the most part, my experiences with the customer service that I receive from most technology related companies sucks beans. However, when I contacted Xandros customer service, I was pleasantly surprised to discover people there who are willing to do whatever it takes to get my issues resolved.

As you may remember from Tuesday I have been having issues with my Zire 31 on Xandros 3.0. On the first pass, we both figured that it must be something with the configuration in either the Palm Pilot utility or my PIM software. After some research, Matt from Xandros was beginning to think that it stemmed from the Palm OS version 5 and up.

Now with most companies, this would have been it. I would be stuck wondering what can be done next, hoping for some magic solution in the next Xandros update from Xandros Networks. To my delight, Matt (the other one) informed me that he was going to actually go out and find a Palm device running OS 5+ so he can run some tests in an effort to get this figured out! Can you believe this? I was truly blown away at the fact that he even cares!

There is something truly comforting in knowing that there are still companies out there that actually give a rip. Now, before you folks start sending me e-mail stating that the reason for Matt being so helpful stems from the fact that I am a software reviewer; consider the following.

They do not receive anything extra from me by being so helpful! The review is already finished; why would he care what I think at this point? Any future that will come about for future revisions will have no reflection of what I think of the company, so why be so darn helpful? Open Source mindset. With the Open Source mindset, people who are involved with the support side of things are doing this not just because it is their job. No, they are doing this line of work because it is something that they truly believe in, themselves.

So the next time I find myself sitting there on the phone with one of the idiots in the mainstream technology area, reading off the same information from the back of a computing appliance that I just gave them ten seconds beforehand, I will take some solace in knowing that at least with Xandros I am not having to wait around for someone with an actual clue.

Let’s get digital!