They shipped me a free copy and a Python T-shirt (to India). I was in my teens: life-long fan since.
[Note, I can't say for sure that's why the above person doesn't work there anymore, but it's likely. I interviewed several times and was astounded that they wanted me to relocate to the middle of nowhere for a 3 month contract.]
See this thread: "Microsoft suggests customer donate extra X-Box they sent him." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3434404
I've been eating cookies for the past month now; what a happy mistake :)
I've seen this with authors who work very hard to make their primary mission communication and education, without "sweating the small stuff". And I've seen it at the top, with the way Tim has run and cared about the business.
It's worked, with me. Currently, I might be better off purchasing single titles than maintaining a Safari subscription. But it's nice to have instant access when I need it. And, damn it, someone has to promote a rational, useful model for ebooks. (Purchased copies feel more like my books, rather than a DRM-choked "license" (aka timebomb). With Safari token-based downloads, that even includes titles from other publishers', e.g. Addison Wesley.)
I now find some other publishers who likewise earn my respect and support (e.g. Pragmatic). But O'Reilly was one of the first to be there, especially in commercial digital publishing on a large scale.
I took some notes on it if anyone wanted to check them out. http://storify.com/ashbhoopathy/create-more-value-than-you-c...
I guess the real amazing thing here is that Tim's generosity and ethos trickles down to his entire company and everything they do, including customer service.
I hope more technologists and organizations work the same way. It really just is better business.
sadly i can never order another book from them, ever after i made the mistake of ordering and actual reading "Couch DB" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596155902.do and "The Art of SEO" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596518875.do front to cover (as i do with 80% of all books i purchase)
It seems like o'reilly is no longer in the book publishing business, but in the business of collecting blogsposts, printing them on paper selling them via their outstanding brand - without any quality assurance of any kind (other than choosing still outstanding cover pics.
additionally i made the mistake of ordering "Data Source Handbook" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018254.do via Amazon, paid my $29.99 and only realized in the moment i opened the box, that it actually has 42 pages and no real content. thanks to jeff b. i could return it to amazon.
its very sad what happened to o'reilly - there was a time you could pick-up/buy any oreilly book, read it from front to cover and then know more about the topic than 99.999% of all other humans on this planet - and you had a very good base of actually becoming a real expert on that topic, these days seem now very long ago.
By the dot-com era, quality had slipped notably. There was so much new tech coming out, and so much demand for it, that random titles would come out, several of which were quite slipshod: poorly written, conterfactual, bad examples, etc.
The Beowulf clusters book was a particular low point.
I recall flipping through another via my standard algorithm: table of contents, introductory chapter, skim a few pages elsewhere, index, and I still had absolutely no idea what the technology in question.
The tagline "the last book on X you'll ever need" did stand out, though, and I can vouch for its truthfulness.
There still are good O'Reilly books out there, but they've long since been an automatic buy (and in fact little on paper, real or virtual, is any more).
It's been great for when I need to review some new technology (e.g., HTML5) but don't want or need to read an entire book about the topic in question. And it works great on my Kindle. Also -- and I'm sure O'Reilly is aware of this -- when I find something particularly good on Safaribooksoline, I sometimes end up purchasing the "deadtree" version of such books so I can have a physical book to read when I'm away from the computer/Kindle.
1) I got some promotional mail for a new subscriber deal, and I asked if they could give me that deal too. In response they gave me a better deal and a free month.
2) I used my tokens to download what I thought was the latest edition of a book(2005, pdf only), but discovered a month later that there was a newer one just released(6yrs newer, epub and .mobi formats). I asked if there was anything they could do, and they refunded my tokens so I could get the new one. (They also gave me 200 extra tokens which they removed after I notified them. If it was a smaller qty I would have just assumed they were being nice and kept them, but 200 was pretty clearly an error.)
Fine. The .co.uk do it better (you can keep the incorrect item). But returning is reasonable enough.
But they've not bothered to correct their listings despite several attempts to fix the problem.
I was in their "O'Reilly Irregulars" group a few years ago, where folks volunteered to go inventory/catalog the ORA books at their local favorite bookstore, in exchange for a free book or two a month. I also ran banner ads for ORA on a couple of my websites. Marsee and the rest of the crew there are wonderful people to deal with.
I go out of my way to buy ebook versions of their titles directly now even though I could pirate them easily for free.
One of the best 'Nix cookbooks ever written.
In fact its probably the cheapest way you can get customer loyalty. If you really take care of a customer, they'll often times stick with you even if you're slightly more expensive than their alternatives.
Credit card shows 3 charges.... friend gets 3 copies of the magazine. They took care of it promptly. Sent me a couple make t-shirts.
Loyal O'Reilly cusomer/ oReilly radar reader.
They trust their reader and will not suppose them speed readers, while Kindle library will not do the same thing.
And of course , big thanks for docbook!
I understand when the second book became a freebie but they could have asked for it to be returned at buyers expense...
As I see it, they could have said, "You ordered it. It's yours." Or they could have said, "Return the book, and we'll refund you (perhaps less shipping and handling, or some such)."
As it was, they said, "Here's your money back. Oh, and just keep the book." While it might indeed be easier and even cheaper for them to deal with the situation this way, it still makes for a nice customer experience. (And so, one could argue they might come out ahead in good will.)
P.S. So, I'm saying, perhaps they couldn't insist the book be returned. But they also didn't have to issue a refund, if the original order (as is described per the OP) was legitimately -- even if mistakenly -- placed. (I.e. he really did order it. It wasn't fraud. And the web site didn't mis-behave -- perhaps this remains an open question, depending upon the exact behavior and a determination of his culpability versus the site's.)
Anyway, more than enough typing about this...
It's a very nice sentiment indeed, and think it adds much more goodwill than the value of the book.
I donated the spare book to my local library.