We came up to Troy, NY for my mother's funeral Suzanne, my wife, Tricia my oldest daughter, Kristy my youngest daughter and Robert my youngest son. After the wake  Friday afternoon my sister Paula's daughter Cary Lynn and her husband Joe needed to get to the bus terminal in Albany as they were going to be God Parents for a friends child the next day.  So I volunteered to take them to Albany. Because we hadn't eaten, we would go to dinner eat and find a hotel.  On the way there we were cut off by some idiot who crossed five lanes of traffic from the left to the right and took off up 8th Street. I took my eyes off the road for a second to look in my rear view mirror and when I looked up again the car in front of me had slammed on their brakes. The car we were driving was larger and couldn't stop as quickly on the Hoosick Street approach to the bridge over the Hudson River. The street is all downhill and five lanes of traffic can go right and avoid the bridge, left and avoid the bridge or go ahead to the bridge where  three lanes will squeeze down to two lanes and cross the bridge. I hit the car in front of me.  We pulled over and called the police so we could get an accident report. This is where it all came apart. It seems for whatever reason, I can't recall, there was no proof  of insurance on our car, so my license had been suspended because of that and the registration was suspended also. The Troy Police, who are famous for making a mountain out of a mole hill,  handcuffed and arrested me and dragged me downtown, they impounded our car and left everyone stranded on Hoosick Street. Tricia, who was eight months pregnant had been sitting in the front seat between my wife and I, she hit her head on the rear view mirror of the car,and immideatly went into labor.So my family hired a cab and rushed her to Samaritan Hospital while Troy's finest brought in the catch of the day.   The police wrote me an appearance ticket  after chaining me to an iron bench at the station, and as it happens in Small-Town-Backwater USA the next open date was the following Monday morning. The police released me around nine that evening, I'm not sure who was waiting for me but we rushed to the hospital to see about Tricia, she was OK but we needed to rent a car and get back to Rochester to find out what the heck went wrong with our paper work. The only place to rent a car in Troy is at the Albany Airport and they were closing at Mid-night. So we packed everyone into a cab and rushed to the airport.   This is where we met our first ANGEL, the woman at the counter required a credit card to rent us a car, we did not have one because, well just because. Robert had one but he did not have a license, the woman at the counter closed her eyes married Robert to Suzanne and got us a car.  We drove all night and got back to Rochester, dropped Tricia off at home and the next day got a hold of our insurance company who assured us we did have insurance and they got us a proof of insurance card. I notified my boss I would not be at work on Monday and what had happened and Sue and I drove back to Troy to be at my appearance at 10:30 A.M on Monday morning.  My case was called and I walked up to speak to the judge to explain the screw up with the paperwork and He said "I only talk to lawyers, come back with a lawyer and I'll talk with you then", rescheduled us for a date in October five weeks out, banged the gavel.  For those of you who have never been to Troy, the Troy City Court is upstairs from the Troy Police Department which is next door the the Fire Department. Sue and I went to speak with someone at the police department to show them it was a big paperwork snafu and we really did have all our ducks in order. They couldn't do anything about it but told us that in the old School Five building up the street was the local Department of Motor Vehicles. So across the street we go and that's where we met our second ANGEL. The lady behind the counter couldn't be any nicer and she squared everything away; she reinstated our registration, my license, and made all our paperwork perfect.  Back a cross the street to the police department and again they couldn't do anything but they suggested we speak to the District Attorney who's offices were upstairs. So off we go to speak to Dimetri Resnick, who made us wait three hours, turned out to be our third ANGEL, we finally got to see him. I explained we were there for my mother' s funeral, the accident, the paperwork snafu, how everything was really OK. He agreed, went to see the judge had all charges dropped in the interest  of justice, told the police to release our car from the impound lot and told us to never come back to Troy again. We said no problem. I thanked him profusely drove to the impound lot, paid the impound lot $100.00 plus towing. We drove to the airport to bring back the rental car. We never did get to the Funeral. The three Angels of Customer service are such that they could have made our lives exceedingly more difficult but were empowered to make the kinds of decisions that enhanced the customer experience.   ...read more

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure." -- Bill Cosby Daniel V. Hebert "The go to Guy in Rochester to Get Anything Printed" KB Graphics 410 W. Commercial Street East Rochester, New York 14622 Work: 585-381-0600 X 216 Fax:585-381-7860 Home: 585-544-0237 (If all else fails) (dan@KB Graphics.com) http://www.linkedin.com/in/dandantheprintingman  ...read more

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.  – George Santayana Daniel V. Hebert "The go to Guy in Rochester to Get Anything Printed" KB Graphics 410 W. Commercial Street East Rochester, New York 14622 Work: 585-381-0600 X 216 Fax:585-381-7860 Home: 585-544-0237 (If all else fails) (dan@KBGraphicscom) http://www.linkedin.com/in/dandantheprintingman  ...read more