I’m new to Pandora. I was enjoying the service with the exception of a few skanky American Apparel ads. I’m not sure what they were advertising exactly, but it must have been some kind of shirt because the girl in the ad wasn’t wearing anything else.

Ahem.

So I shot off an email to Pandora to voice my concern/complaint about the ads.

Shortly after I got a “Thanks for your feedback, we’re looking into it”-type of response. Unsatisfied, I wrote back and asked when I should expect to hear back on how the matter was resolved. Less than 10 minutes later:

“I believe our team is working on removing this ad as I type – we serve network ads at times that sometimes slip through…that don’t meet our standards.”

Impressive. Fast. Responsive. I gave them a shout-out on Twitter. Later that day I got this:

Wait. Hang on. I complained about your company, you did the right thing and took down the ad and now you’re sending me a t-shirt? Basically.

And it came in the mail today. Along with some stickers, a hand-signed letter from the founder and, oddly, a CD* opener/cleaner contraption:

Pandora did a great job of taking what could have been very negative (this post would have been very different) and turned it into a situation where I’m telling random coworkers about Pandora’s awesomeness.

*CDs? Really? Pandora is two steps removed from CDs (CD -> MP3 -> streaming music) so it seems odd to send out a tool to help you open and clean them. But thanks just the same.