Hey fellow citizens of Gogistan, just wondering what your best and worst encounter with customer service was like. For me, I have no best experience. And for worst... I can't choose between the time I called Adobe because my serial key crapped out on my copy of Photoshop CS3 or with Apple when my click wheel somehow stopped working.

Surprisingly my best and worst experience is from the same customer service, Microsoft.
The best would be the first time my 360 bricked. The guy I got on the line with was very helpful and efficient with managing the whole thing so I was done with it before I even knew it.
The worst time was ironically the second time my 360 bricked at which point talking to an actual person wasn't even a fucking option and the only thing I got is the link to their support page database for managing the whole thing. After which the process of applying for a repair ticket was long and stupid (the damn thing wouldn't register my address correctly) so shipping a "coffin" for my bricked 360 was not an option. And since I couldn't talk to anyone about it because of the new policy I was pretty much fucked.

For best I'd have to say the steps that people at CD Projeckt Red took to get me a copy of the Witcher, seriously above and beyond the call of duty there and one of the primary reasons why I wound up using GOG >_>
As for worst.... Hmm. Tough choice. Could it be the non-help I got from EA (US support) who were far more interested in trying to farm private information out of me that had no releation to my purchase -- but would have let them steal my identity (so no, they never got that information). Strangely enough though, the Japanese support for EA is actually very good and very helpful -- it's just almost impossible to contact them in the first place as they don't have an email address, and take the support ticket system offline for very long periods. And the cost to phone them pretty much rules out ever doing so.
Or could it be Steam support and their amazing ability to sweep problems under the rug and ignore problems for over 6 months? I expect that if they hadn't changed their support software, the ticket I opened 6 months before that point would still be open now. Completely and utterly unanswered. In the end that particular issue was solved by the developers, despite the issue being caused directly by Valve.
As much as I like Steam, the support gives a whole new meaning to the word "terrible".

Wow, well good thing I never had steam related issues. What was the problem? What game?

those dialaphone style companies that give you free phones and the promise of cashback, and then essentially make it almost (if not totally) impossible to claim the aforementioned cashback.
If it wasn't for finding a forum of people all working to try to figure out the system, and getting the information i needed from there, i'd have had no chance.
As for gaming, I can't actually recall ever having any problems with customer support, slow responses at times, but nothing terrible. (retail or digital download).

I'm fairly spoiled, the worst customer service I received was on GOG.com

Wow, well good thing I never had steam related issues. What was the problem? What game?
Jagged alliance Unfinished Business -- the game was unplayable, you couldn't even save. Valve were sent the patch to fix it, several times over the course of a year, and never once put the patch up.
Eventually, the JA2 and UB were replaced with "gold" versions that were finally patched but not until after most people were given replacement copies from other sources.
The funny thing is, Valve use Steam's patching ability as a selling point, yet you can see from here:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=838858
How well that is actually working out. Valve seriously need to review their business practices in this respect and change them. At the very least they should be contacting developers for patches once they know they are released. But they can't even be bothered to do that, passing the responsibility on to their customers instead.
I actually find the partial (as in they sadly do not do it for every game) patching notices from Gamersgate to be more efficient these days.

why wouldn't the developer contact the seller of the goods?

Worst would be D2D. I made them a ticket once and it took them a week to answer me. And it wasn't a satisfactory answer, either. Basically they just told me that they didn't care about my problem. Blah.
I can't remember any good experiences. I know I've had some really good service that has made go "wow", but I just can't recall any names now.

Obviously it didn't make you go wow enough, or else you'd remember.

You wouldn't believe how bad I am at remembering names, even if I told you.

I can actually relate to this. I am also horrible at remembering names. :/

I can't remember the worst, but I had a bad experience just this week.
I bought the "Slash & Hack" pack off of Impluse last Friday. It contains Space Hack and The Chosen: Well Of Souls and was only $5. The games work perfectly on my two XP machines but don't even start on my 32 bit Vista Ultimate pc. The first email response was to inform me to install Impluse, as if I hadn't yet! WTF, how could I report a problem if I didn't download the games using Impulse! Then support told me to verify the download. So I did that and, yes the downloads were correct. So last night I sent an email explaining that. Today I receive an email saying that Space Hack doesn't support Vista. And since they don't know why it doesn't work, I need to contact the developer because Stardock/Impulse doesn't support The Chosen.
At least they responded very quickly. I've read plenty of comments at the Steam forums about how bad Steam support is.

My "worst" customer service experience?
Spend almost an hour on phone trying to get out of paying a bill. My mobile phone plan ended on 10 of march 08. 12 of march my phone stopped working/aka I could dial emergency calls and stuff but normal calls were prohibited. So I figured that they simply canceled my plan as i didn't tell them to extend it. I threw away sim car and replaced it with new one.
A month later in April comes a bill and they want me to pay for whole march. Apparently I have to call them to cancel my plan. Furthermore, they want me to pay for april too.
Took an hour of polite arguing that since they stopped providing me a service on 12 of march the contract between me and their company is nullified and I have no obligation to pay for whole month.
I ended up paying for my mobile tv subscription and for calls made from 10-12 of march. 24 bucks instead of 90.
That is my 'worst' experience. Banks, phone/internet, flight customer services were always good for me (although waiting for them to pick up a phone can be a bitch. but i understand that). Never had problem with returns either (gotta love Big W: they don't even ask any question, they just give your money back and ask for you to sing one slip)