Last night, I had a couple of those experiences that make you remember just how fantastic the Internet is -- specifically how much easier it is now to communicate with people and corporations.

I ordered a couple of books from Amazon (Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software and Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET -- I'll post about them later), and I didn't realize that the shipping address was wrong until I received the 'order has been shipped' email. Because the items were on my wishlist, the default shipping address was set to an obsolete address associated with that wishlist, instead of my default click-once address. It was entirely my fault for not double-checking the shipping address. The old shipping address is about 900 miles from my current home, and I couldn't make any progress with the shipper.

Thus, without much hope, I tried explaining my predicament to an Amazon customer service rep via email. A few hours later, I received an email from a nice Indian fellow who had completely resolved the situation. He had contacted the shipper, canceled the first order, and created a new order completely free of charge. He even upgraded the shipping to overnight. I have their Prime membership and spend a significant amount of money on their site. But that level of service far surpasses anything I've received elsewhere. I would never expect a giant company like Amazon to go to such lengths to make an average joe consumer avoid some inconvenience. 

The other event is that I contacted Jon Skeet (the author of C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3 and community mentor) to share some code I wrote that was based on some of his examples. I also asked him a question about CLR internals. He answered me the same night, despite this being his first week at a new job with Google. He was extremely nice and thoughtful. It shouldn't surprise me, I guess, but it always does. BTW, congratulations on the new move, Jon; I'm sure it's going to be exciting.