As I was sitting with my son looking at the new toys I took out the Planisphere Geocoin and was trying to show him how it worked. I said "you see, you spin this ring and Polaris is always in the... Where's Polaris???...." Then it hit me. I looked at the front of the Silver casing and noticed the words "Southern Hemisphere" Like me, my wife had just gone for the Silver case over the gold/bronze looking one because we both prefer silver over gold/bronze. I hadn't noticed, when showing it to her online, that there was one for each Hemisphere. Oh Crap was our first thought then it was off to the computer to check CoinsAndPins return policy. After reviewing their policy I found we had 20 days to deal with the mistake if they would indeed exchange it. It was definitely our fault and not a mistake on their part. My fault for failing to realize the 2 coin differences and my wife's for ordering what I had shown her. Then again I guess that makes it my fault over all but who's counting :)

I called their Customer Service line and left a VoiceMail with a brief description of the problem and my call back number. After not hearing back that day I decided to just fill out their online form and see if that worked better. If they were like me they work better from email rather than phone so I sent in my request. I got an email back from them the next day and was told to just send back the Southern Hemisphere Geocoin and they'd replace it with the Northern Hemisphere no problem. Excellent! I thought. So I put "mail back planisphere geocoin" on my "To Do" list for the week and kept getting busy and being unable to make it to the Post Office in time before closing. Then today the most interesting thing happened. A package showed up from CoinsAndPins.com containing my replacement Northern Hemisphere Planisphere Geocoin! I still haven't had time to send back the goof order and they still went ahead and shipped me the replacement! Most companies are rather stingy and demand the return of the original order before they'll even process the replacement. CoinsAndPins.com went above and beyond in helping me fix an order that was messed up through no fault of their own. It was a mistake on our part and they were under no obligation to do anything until I returned the original planisphere but they did it anyway.

That right there is EXCEPTIONAL Customer Service and that is the type of company that gets its customers and that I will gladly continue to do business with in the future.

I'm really looking forward to their Ring Dial Geocoin and Sextant Navigation Geocoin and hope to add them to my collection later this year when they become available.