The Corporate Brush-Off

A couple of years ago, I wrote a moaning-and-groaning column about the complete and utter deterioration of customer service, replete with examples of how I'd been trifled with or left on hold forever by extremely unhelpful people.

The reaction was huge. For months, people wrote me letters denouncing the insensitive corporations that mistreat the folks who buy their products and regaling me with their own horror stories. Every time another paper would reprint the piece, I'd get a small deluge of letters from yet another state.

I think this is the sleeper issue of our time. Who out there has not had the infuriating experience of dealing with rude or indifferent agents of phone, computer, banking, Internet, health care and insurance companies? If I were running a newspaper -- which I'm not -- I would start a daily column devoted to such outrages. People who feel they've been abused would write in and the crusading columnist would confront the miscreants. Nothing but readers.

Here's a sample of my rant: "A while back I canceled a 30-day trial on a cell phone that had terrible reception and was told I had to wait for the company to send a mailing label so I could return the phone and get the promised refund. The label never came. I called back and was again told the label would be sent out. I'm still waiting. This came after I had called another cell phone company to cancel a contract that had expired after two years. The firm kept billing me. When I called to complain, an agent said there was no record of the cancellation call. Such corporate amnesia has become common. When I had to cancel a hotel reservation because I couldn't make the trip, I was told a refund would be no problem. When I called again to ask about the refund, there was supposedly no record of my earlier call."

After all, this is the kind of anger that fuels sites like Planet Feedback , and when Jeff Jarvis complained about what he called "Dell Hell" after the computer maker sold him a lemon, the reaction was so viral that it got Dell's attention.

I bring this up now because of two recent pieces that remind me how everyone, even hotshot newspaper columnists, has to go through these demeaning experiences. First, Joe Nocera in the New York Times, who tried to get Apple to repair a broken iPod:

"Eventually, you find the number and make the call. Although the tech support guy quickly diagnoses your problem -- a hard drive gone bad -- he really has only one suggestion: buy a new iPod. 'Since it is out of warranty,' he says, 'there's nothing we can do.' You're a little stunned. But you're not ready to give up. On the Apple site, there's a form you can fill out to send the iPod back to Apple and get it fixed. But you do a double-take when you see the price. Apple is going to charge you $250, plus tax, to fix your iPod. There is no mistaking the message: Apple has zero interest in fixing a machine it was quite happy to sell you not so long ago.

"Now you're reeling. You're furious. But what choice do you have? You can't turn to a competitor's product, not if you want to keep using Apple's proprietary iTunes software, where you've stored all the music you love, including songs purchased directly from the iTunes Music Store, which you'll lose if you leave the iTunes environment. So you grit your teeth and buy a new iPod. Of course since it's a newer machine, it has that cool video capability. But you're still angry."

Up next, Steve Pearlstein of The Washington Post:

"The Satellite Guy showed up at 3:20 last Friday at our new residence in Northwest D.C. The morning appointment had been set weeks before, and since noon we'd received a series of calls from the dispatcher promising Satellite Guy would be there within the hour to install the DirecTV dish. Instead, he had in his hand a paper he wanted me to sign, canceling my order. Too many tall trees, he declared.

"No hello. No apologies for keeping us tied down all day. No walk around the property to consider potential locations for the dish or find out if some trees could be trimmed or cut. No explanation for why his sales colleague had never warned that trees might pose a problem.

"A follow-up call to his supervisor in Idaho elicited only one of those disingenuous apologies people learn to deliver at one-day customer-service training sessions. It quickly became obvious that he was totally uninterested in learning how his company might avoid aggravating customers in the future."