Last Friday (Aug. 11) I ordered an off-air antenna from Antennas Direct. I ordered a DB4 antenna, the 18" J-Mount, and 100 feet of RG6 coaxial cable.

They only offered FedEx shipping, which I don't prefer because it seems to be so much more expensive than all of the other alternatives. But that's fine. I had called and asked, since they're located in Eureka, MO (about 35 miles from our house), if they had a warehouse somewhere that I could just go and pick up the items after I ordered them. The lady that I spoke with told me that, no, they don't do that, but they do sometimes have returned items in their office that I could come look at and purchase for a discount. Since their return policy on those items was "No Returns," I decided against going that route.

So I placed my order. Lo and behold, on Saturday morning two antennae and two mounts arrived. I wondered if I had won some sort of weird contest that they didn't publish or advertise, and whose winnings were things I had already bought. In any case, what didn't arrive was the cable that I needed in order to actually plug the antenna into the Satellite receiver.

But, me being unable to wait however long it was going to take for the cable to arrive, I went to Ace, bought 75' of cable, and went to work on Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning, I called Antennas Direct and left them a message saying that I'd gotten two of two things and none of one thing. I asked if they could send someone to pick up the extras, and if they could remove the cable from my order and refund me the cost.

This morning, not having heard back from them, I called again and left another message. About an hour later, a lady named Susan called me and explained that they had had a glitch in the shopping cart on their website. A local warehouse was holding the antenna and mount, so it got shipped quickly, and twice, due to the glitch. She told me that I was free to keep the extra antenna and mount.

Then she said, "and you said something about a refund?"

I explained that I had hoped that the cable hadn't yet shipped so that they could just remove it from the order and refund me the cost of the cable and the shipping for the cable. She said that it had already shipped. I told her not to worry about it, and that I'd just call and get an RMA # after it arrived so that I could return it to them. We hung up.

About a half-hour later, Susan called again and told me that she had stopped the shipment of the cable, and that she'd already refunded the cost of the cable and the shipping charges for it.

How's that for great customer service? It would have been perfectly acceptable for her to just let the shipment proceed. I would have done whatever I needed to do to get the cable back to them and my money back to me. But she just finished it off for me.

So, if you're in the market for a TV antenna to receive off-air digital broadcasts, let me recommend Antennas Direct. It's clearly a small operation, but they really took care of me. Also, the antenna works, which is important, too. It's a quality product.