Some purchasing experiences can be a bit of nightmare. Unfriendly or unhelpful staff, packages that go ‘missing’ during shipment, and courier companies that feel as though leaving your parcel on someone else’s doorstep and providing you with some tantalizing clues as to where it is, is as much fun as going on an organized treasure hunt.

Other companies though, just get it right. Enter Thorlabs. Thorlabs produce and sell a huge range of optical components, and I often use their parts and adapters when building lenses such as a UV lens I made based on their 79mm UV Aspheric lens.

This has proved to be used for UV imaging and can potentially even be useful well down into the short wavelength UVC region.

But this where they get a big ‘tick’ from me – customer service. When you ring them up and ask for advice, they genuinely sound as though they want to help. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Add that to the range of kit they sell and the good prices and you have a winning combination. And then we come to the icing on the cake. In with the deliveries you often get Lab Snacks – nibbles and treats to help make the day go more smoothly (by the way Thorlabs, my wife says thank you so much for these).

In a world of mediocre customer service, it is great when you get something like this. Thank you Thorlabs, I’m a very satisfied customer and shall continue to buy many more optical components from you in the future.