Whether a company makes a great product is only half of what makes it a good brand. The other half is how well the company performs when its product has a problem. I’ve just had an excellent support experience with Anker, manufacturer of a number of USB batteries, chargers, and Bluetooth keyboards I own.
A couple of months ago, reviewed a couple of Bluetooth keyboards by Anker that I bought for use with my tablets. Lately, the rechargeable one developed a rather annoying glitch—the very top row of keys stopped working at all. I did the standard troubleshooting—made sure the keyboard was fully-charged, tried the keyboard with a different tablet, tried a different keyboard with that tablet—and the results showed that the problem was consistent in the keyboard itself. So I contacted Anker using a support form on its web site.
Shortly afterward, Anker contacted me by email, asking for more details on the problem, a little further troubleshooting, and the serial number on the USB cable that came with the keyboard. The Anker representative was polite, attentive, and conversational, and was glad to hear I was enjoying Anker products in general. She didn’t require me to send the broken unit in, and was able to dispatch a replacement via Amazon order fulfillment. It arrived promptly, and worked fine.
I find it interesting that Anker seems to have a close working relationship with Amazon. The support form had a place to put the Amazon order number of the purchase, and the replacement arrived via Amazon’s order fulfillment system. This makes Amazon an excellent place to buy Anker products, since they’ll be able to verify the warranty information and send out a replacement promptly. It also explains why a number of Anker products keep showing up at Bulldog Liquidators, the surplus-and-damaged-goods shop in my neighborhood that seems to obtain most of its inventory from Amazon overstocks. I got one of my keyboards there, as well as a wall-wart USB charger and a small USB battery pack also made by Anker.
I was extremely satisfied with the level of service I received from Anker, and plan to purchase more of their products.
You might also mention that Amazon sells a lot of third-party junk of dubious origin, junk that often claims to be name-brand parts. The comments are often filled with criticism, but Amazon seems to do little to stop these sellers. Anker does seem to be an exception to that pattern, and that’s good. But keep in mind that Anker differs not from other products on the market but other products being sold on Amazon.
Those who’d like to see what the Chinese “let the buyer beware” market is really like should visit:
http://www.aliexpress.com/
Great-seeming prices and often free shipping. Try searching for “USB meter” and you’ll get thousands of results with prices as low as $3. (USB meters measure the current and voltage to USB devices. That can be handy.) Those are what you’ll find on Amazon, eBay and elsewhere at higher prices, so you are cutting out the middle-man. And the product descriptions are hilarious, such as:
“Check the parameters: Quick beat the button double times (within 0.5s), then it is checking model.”
If you can manage a device with unintelligible instructions and a high failure rate, you can find some exceptional deals there. But, unlike with Anker, you’ve got to be willing to live with risk, particularly with your supplier a small store front operation an ocean away. They’re nothing like Anker.