I’m used to companies offering less than stellar customer care in this age of low-cost, low-margin business. So when a company goes above and beyond to take care of their customers, it gets my attention.

Most early-adopters suspected that the High Definition Disc Format war would end and either HD-DVD or Blu-ray would one day become obsolete. Which is why I’m surprised that Busy Buy and Circuit City are both compensating customers who chose the now obsolete HD-DVD format. Best Buy will be giving a $50 giftcard to anyone who purchased a HD-DVD Player prior to February 23, 2008 (just go to BestBuyTradein.com and register.)

Circuit City has taken a different approach, extending the return period for player by “several months.” So a customer can return the player for full credit, but obviously will be unable to play any HD-DVD movies they already purchased as they will no longer have a player. It’s interesting that Bust Buy officially announced this while Circuit City made this an unofficial policy.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart, the low-cost advocate of HD-DVD, is offering their customers nothing.

Netflix, where I’ve been a customer for 8 years, had a massive outage last Monday, lasting about 12 hours. As a result, they were unable to ship my two movies until the following day. A 1 day delay; not a big deal. I was just glad that they acknowledged and apologized for the the problem. But I was elated when they went above and beyond by offering a 10% discount on my fees for the month.

Since it’s tax time, I feel the need to complain about Intuit TurboTax. The software is great, but the price gouging is terrible. They find every way possible to charge the customer more, right up to the unreasonable filing fees. I generally have faith in the free market, but the TurboTax / Tax Cut dual-opoly is not yielding the fruit competition should. I’m just hoping that these companies learn something from Bust Buy, Circuit City, and Netflix about doing what is right for their customers.