on one of my current projects, i needed to barcode a document (via CF) and subsequently read the barcode (again, via CF). the documents would be sent via fax and rerouted to the CF server.

because of its durability, my client wanted to use a data matrix barcode. as luck would have it, ryan stille had already gone through the trouble of putting together a CFC for reading and generating data matrix barcodes (thanks, ryan!).

the CFC is a wrapper for some java libraries that read and write barcodes. in the docs for the CFC, ryan suggests a company called Java4Less.com. i grabbed evaluation versions of the appropriate libraries to ensure they'd work, which they did. i then instructed my client to go ahead and make the purchase and told him which 2 libraries we needed. now, Java4Less offer up a few components and i've been a bit sleep deprived and long story short, one of the libraries that i told the client to purchase was not the correct library.

the purchase process involves making a payment, and then receiving a link where you can access the product(s) that you've purchased. payment was made... and shortly thereafter we got an email from one of the Java4Less guys double checking to make sure that we were ordering the right components (we weren't). i'm guessing that the incorrect component we requested didn't quite "fit" well with the other one, and sent up a red flag. but it was very cool that the company noticed that red flag, and acted on it.

i responded, explaining what we were looking to do and got a confirmation back that we had definitely ordered the wrong item, and that they'd make sure the right components were in place at the download link.

the customer service didn't end there.

the other night i was implementing the barcoding, and got errors while instantiating the reader. java errors. not being a java guy, i immediately panicked. fired an email off to Java4Less with the error message (big old cfdump), our JVM version, and anything else i could think of that would help them to isolate the issue. less than a day later, i got an email response that i was missing a jar file. one of the components (which come zipped) had 2 jar files. apparently i had only extracted one. disaster averted.

it's really been a while since i've seen that kind of customer service. both proactive (in the case of our incorrect order) and reactive (in the case of me being an idiot). if you find yourself in the market for one of the following products, you can definitely buy from Java4Less with confidence.