Let's be honest -- sometimes you're paying for the service

We have All-Clad pots and pans.  Our 3qt saute pan developed some sort of problem around the rivets that hold the small handle to the side of the pan — to be honest, the problem looked like electrolysis to me due to the burned black area around each rivet that expanded when heat was applied.

My wife stopped in Williams-Sonoma, which is where we originally purchased the pots and pans.  Although Williams-Sonoma does not sell the pots and pans above MSRP, there are certainly other stores that do sell All-Clad at a discount.  In any event, she described the problem that we were having and the sales associate told her to bring in the pan.

It is important to note at this point that All-Clad has a lifetime warranty on the products, but in most situations you would have to return the pan to All-Clad to get warranty service or replacement.  My wife brought the pan and lid back in to Williams-Sonoma today and left with a replacement lid and pan new in the box.

My guess is that it might be a little bit of a pain in the ass for Williams-Sonoma to deal with the warranty claim on our behalf especially because they already provided us with a replacement pan and lid.  The interesting thing is that Williams-Sonoma only asked my wife for her name and zip code; they didn’t make her fill out the full background check form that other stores require for returns.  In effect, if Williams-Sonoma sends the pot in and All-Clad denies the claim, then Williams-Sonoma is out the cost of the replacement pan.

The moral of the story here is that sometimes the reason that you do business with companies like Williams-Sonoma and pay full retail price is because of the level of service that they provide.  It is experiences like this that will cause us to continue to do business with Williams-Sonoma and encourage others to do business with Williams-Sonoma.

Link — Williams-Sonoma

Link — All-Clad