do the right thing

when last we saw the hubster's bike, it was a crumpled mess on the side of a small highway in back woods florida, as it and my bike had just broken off our bike rack and become bicycle origami.
my bike was repaired to the tune of $250, the hub's was declared dead at the scene.
i had an exchange with the folks at SARIS, the bikerack manufacturer that you can revisit if you'd like here, but suffice to say they wanted a photo of the bikes on the rack to make sure we hadn't attached them incorrectly.
i'm sure if you're like us, you capture every moment of your trips so as not to forget a single detail.
yeah, right.
once we had receipts and estimates in hand, i had the hubs contact the company because people don't seem to write off men as easily as a woman. don't mean to sound all sexist here, but it's true. (at least in this case)
and even the hubs had a go-around with them, and he got our bike store to vouch for us. i'm thinkin if your bike rack is so complicated that any normal person couldn't put it on a car (since we've been doing this for years… hauling bikes) without it breaking then perhaps you might have a design flaw.

imagine my surprise when i went outside today to find a box containing a new bike rack from saris on our front steps!! (not that i want to ever use it again, mind you, but NICE!)

then i went to the mailbox and what to my wondering eyes should appear… but a nice juicy check from saris along with a note that says even though we think you still put it on your car incorrectly, we're gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, blah blah blah.
it's not every day that companies step up and do the right thing. too often you have to drag a lawyer into the mix and get kinda ugly about it. they'll settle, but then you've just lost 1/3 of the cash. so we're thrilled that this didn't drag on mercilessly for months. seriously, it's been 4 weeks.
so bravo, saris.
my faith in american businesses has been restored!