Remarkable businessman, extraordinary customer service

This new year has been particularly cold in Park City with temperatures down to -5 F some mornings. So, a few days ago, when I turned on our gas fireplace and it didn’t start, I was disappointed, and even though the heat was on, the added warmth provided by the fireplace as well as its flames are a cheering sight when outside temperatures are so low. 

So I looked closer and found out that the pilot light was out. I opened up the compartment, took the instruction book out, and restarted the flame, but when I hit the switch there was still no fire roaring. 

I check on YouTube and the rest of the Internet to find out that perhaps the inside of the fireplace was dirty. That fireplace was put in service when we built our home eight years ago! I then proceeded to take of the glass plate off, removed the fake logs and engage into a thorough vacuuming and cleaning of the entire insert. 

When I though all was done to my satisfaction, I re-installed the whole assembly, and as I lit the pilot and tested again, there was no flames to be seen. I dismounted the whole insert again and thoroughly cleaned up the thermocouple to make sure it was free of soot and reset the whole fireplace, to alas, no positive result. 

That’s when I decided that I would call the fireplace supplier (Alpine Fireplaces in Lehi, Utah) after the holiday weekend. We were on New Year’s day and I thought of taking a look at the supplier’s website and let them know about my problem so they could put me on top of their list the following Monday. I got in the chat room and said that I owned a fireplace installed in 2014 and when I turned on the switch, the fire failed to ignite, yet the pilot light worked, and ask them to come over and fix the problem as soon as possible. 

One hour and 45 minutes later, on that same New Year’s day when everyone is supposed to be hung-over, do nothing and is half-asleep in front of the TV, I received an answer that said: “A couple of easy things to check. One, is the valve still in the pilot position? Common mistake, this lets the pilot operate but wont let the fireplace ignite. Make sure the valve is turned to the on position. Two, the switch on the wall that turns the fireplace on, may need replaced. This is a millivolt system and will not shock you, you can easily take the switch off the wall and take the two wires and touch them together, if they ignite the fireplace, replace the switch. Let me know what you find”, signed, Bruce Broadbent, CMO.

I started backward, found out the switch was okay and then discovered that I had not reset the pilot light to the “on” position. When I did it, it worked perfectly well. Bruce was my hero and along with my heartfelt thanks and congratulations I sent him something via Amazon as a way to reward him for his extraordinary response. 

What I learned from that story was that Bruce is an outstanding executive who knows what extraordinary customer service is, and that the incident gave the opportunity to effect a long overdue deep-clean of my gas fireplace insert from top to bottom!