That was my attitude until last night, when I took out my Kindle to discover the top two thirds of the screen had frozen, while the lower third of the screen worked perfectly. It was the Dolly Parton of eBook readers, and I rang Amazon fully expecting to be ushered onto the usual treadmill of pointless questions and obfuscation.

Instead I got Rose and Simon. Not together. They weren’t dueting support queries or anything – though that would be awesome.

Amazon plays constant reruns of Bambi’s mum dying in their call centres, and selects its staff by throwing rocks at kittens to see who breaks down first

After a few rings Rose picked up the phone and walked me through a hard reset of the Kindle, just to make sure that I wasn’t being thick, or holding it back-to-front or anything. Once she’d determined that I had an IQ over 12 (mistakenly in my case), she passed me onto Simon, who apologised for my Kindle being broken while managing to sound like he actually meant it. I swear there was a catch in his throat, like he’d just watched a puppy getting washed down the river. I can only assume that Amazon plays constant reruns of Bambi’s mum dying in their call centres, and selects its staff by throwing rocks at kittens to see who breaks down first.

Anyway, after wiping away his tears, Simon swiftly offered to replace my Kindle – just like that. No problems, no fuss, no drama. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to ship a new one to my home in Dubai, though he extended the return period to 60 days on the broken one, so I have plenty of time to get it back to them. He even sent out a free return postage label.

After filling me in on the West Ham vs Liverpool score – at which point we had another little cry together – he wished me the best and hung up. It seems odd to celebrate somebody doing their job, but I doubt there’s anybody reading this blog who doesn’t have a tech support horror to share. As a customer and a journalist, it’s occasionally nice to write a blog that’s not whinging about something being rubbish, or demanding a company stop being awful. This is that blog.

The Kindle is great, and Amazon customer service is excellent. That really shouldn’t be such a rare thing to hear, and I only wish I could say it more often.

But there was one surprisingly pleasant part to the whole process, and it’s surprising because it’s the aspect of moving I dreaded the most: changing my address details with all the service providers that take my money each month.

Without exception, the web-based services I’ve used have been flawless – for example, using the Royal Mail redirection service online is 50 times easier than going into a Post Office (if you can still find one) and filling in a box-ridden form.

But what I’ve found most exceptional is when I actually spoke to people. Perhaps I called on a good day, but my ISP was efficient, friendly and delivered on its promises – not only to attempt to tie in my broadband connection with when my phone number went live, but to monitor the progress and let me know how it went.

It wasn’t just my ISP. I had to ring BT, British Gas, Ecotricity and others, and without fail I was met with a friendly voice and someone who genuinely wanted to help (or at least appeared to – perhaps they’re all jobbing actors).

Perhaps – and this is a tentative perhaps – we’re seeing a change. Companies are focusing on customer service as a differentiator to their rivals, perhaps they’re realising this is the key to their long-term survival. Whatever the motivation, I’ll be interested to see if this is reflected in 2009’s Reliability & Service survey, where PC Pro finds out which IT companies offer the best customer service (and, as the name might just give away, the most reliable products).

Click here if you want to take part in the survey, but I’d also be interested to see if I’m alone in this experience. Is customer service actually getting better as a whole? Or is it just the sunny weather going to everyone’s heads?