The Corporate Brush-Off

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 8, 2006 1:18 PM

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."

I'll keep an eye out for other mad-as-hell pieces.

Gee, I don't recall this coming up in the debate on lobbying reform:

"Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee," The Washington Post reports.

How 'bout that.

Slate's Emily Bazelon says the Judiciary hearings on surveillance amounted to bupkis:

"No witnesses other than Gonzales. No new details of the National Security Agency spying program that the committee was supposed to be inquiring about. No request for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program.

"Given the box Specter constructed for the hearings, what could be learned from them? Actually, the day was pretty instructive, not on the topics of spying or national security, but on the bizarre embrace into which the legislature and the executive have locked themselves since Sept. 11. Congress claims that it wants to exercise its war powers and help set rules for NSA spying -- but in fact it's afraid to, for fear of appearing to undermine the president. And the Bush administration acts like it wants to undo the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- but it fears the public uproar that amending the act would create.

"The fuss over whether Gonzales should testify under oath seemed to be about the possibility, at least in Specter's mind, that the attorney general was about to say something that could get him into trouble for lying. Gonzales had been sworn in when he testified twice before, as have other Department of Justice officials."

There was a striking bit of Bush-slapping at Coretta Scott King's funeral from Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery, and that naturally has touched off a political debate.

"Four American presidents yesterday joined hands and bowed their heads in prayer for civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, but the joyful celebration of her life turned harsh, with one former president and a prominent black preacher bitterly criticizing President Bush for his surveillance of terror suspects," says the Washington Times .

On "Hardball," according to Expose the Left , Kate O'Beirne said that " 'liberals can't seem to be able to keep politics away from funerals' and called Carter what he is, a "southerner with no graciousness.' "

The Anchoress calls it "Wellstoning the King Funeral."

This triggered a rather sharp reaction from John Aravosis at Americablog :

"You know it's only a matter of hours before the Republican Swift Boating of Rev. Lowery and Coretta's funeral begins. How dare a black man not know his place at a funeral, they'll say. As if the Republican party and its surrogates have any right whatsoever to speak on behalf of Mrs. King, to tell black America what they can and cannot do to honor one of their most revered leaders. "A party that doesn't have a single African-American member of Congress has no right lecturing black people about knowing their place."

Maybe this won't be such a great year for the Dems, the New York Times suggests:

"Democrats are heading into this year's elections in a position weaker than they had hoped for, party leaders say, stirring concern that they are letting pass an opportunity to exploit what they see as widespread Republican vulnerabilities. . . .

"Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November."

Andrew Sullivan has little sympathy for the Muslim cartoon rioters:

"Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They're blasphemy -- the mother of all offenses. That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.

"Blasphemy, after all, is commonplace in the West. In America, Christians have become accustomed to artists' offending their religious symbols. They can protest, and cut off public funding -- but the right of the individual to say or depict offensive messages or symbols is not really in dispute. Blasphemy, moreover, is common in the Muslim world, and sanctioned by Arab governments. The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and the symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich. But I have yet to see Jews or Israelis threaten the lives of Muslims because of it."

Why have most American media outlets refused to run the offending cartoons? That's what Harry Shearer wants to know on HuffPost:

"Was it two years ago? Janet Jackson and what's-his-name did that cute little halftime number (the same slot that got the Rolling Stones censored this year: 'You make a dead man -- uhhhh'), and then she had her wardrobe malfunction. American religionists of a certain flavor were outraged, and for at least two weeks it seemed as if no newspaper, website, or television news or newsertainment program could be produced that didn't include a healthy serving of the malfunction.

"Sometimes the offending nipple was pixilated, sometimes not, but any news media outlet that refused to jump on that bandwagon is most likely read only by academics or is out of business.

"Flash forward, and religionists of a certain flavor overseas are outraged about some cartoons solicited as illustrations for a book on Islam. A Danish newspaper published them first, then other papers in Europe followed in solidarity against the slowly rising protest. By the time this story got on the American radar screen, embassies were being burned, and editors and cartoonists were getting death threats. And how many American media outlets let us see what the fuss was about? On his program Monday night, Tucker Carlson quizzed the M.E. of the Chicago Tribune about the latter's decision not to run the offending drawings. Carlson admirably started by acknowledging his own network's similar refusal. For many newspapers, the decision was made for them by the AP. Here's that service's explanation to the SF Chronicle:

" Speaking by phone, AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll told The Chronicle, 'The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content. The AP is not just an indiscriminate warehouse for information. We put a lot of care into what we put on the wire.'

"The AP cared enough to put a photo of Jackson's malfunction on the wire, just so, you know, we'd understand the context of the fuss. But, of course, that was then."

By the way, there's a cartoon out there, by Mike Luckovich, that pictures wounded soldiers -- but no protest from the Joint Chiefs. Maybe because the butt of this one is not the military but the media.

Louisville Courier-Journal cartoonist Nick Anderson says by e-mail: "I'm waiting for the Joint chiefs to protest 'using such a callous depiction of those who volunteered to defend this nation and, as a result, suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds.' I am also waiting for the right-wing punditocracy to express horror that injured troops are being exploited to score political points. . . . Perhaps it depends whose ox is being gored?"

Geoff Dougherty says (via Romenesko) he was working for the Chicago Tribune last year on a piece about executive compensation and that Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons loomed large:

"As I crunched the numbers, it became apparent that FitzSimons' pay would figure prominently in the article. It seemed like an article we needed to publish, even if it would reflect negatively on the Tribune's top exec.

"So I wrote it. My editor signed off on it. The copy desk cleared it and slated it for publication last May.

"And then, 36 hours before the article was to appear, it was killed. Tribune editors ducked questions about why they hadn't run the article, and declined to schedule it for publication."

Here's an interesting debate, from L.A. writer Cathy Seipp , on what you should or shouldn't do when a reporter calls you for information:

"David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times tax reporter and self-styled press critic, is not pleased with the journalistic ethics I displayed in my pundit-payola column the other week. Although in that piece I described turning down a $1,000-cash-for-comment bribe, apparently I'd still violated some sort of code by relating that story here before the Times had a chance to get it into print.

"The 'Cathy Seipp anecdote,' as I heard it became known in-house, seems to have been ruined for the Times by Cathy Seipp having the gall to use it in a Cathy Seipp column first; their story was evidently supposed to run about three weeks ago and so far has not. Johnston hadn't been one of the reporters working on the piece, nor, as far as I know, did he have anything to do with it.

"But apparently his status as a press critic -- Johnston has written for Columbia Journalism Review, and is a frequent crank on the Romenesko letters page -- obligated him to weigh in. So he felt moved to lecture me via e-mail (subject line: 'Gosh, Catherine'), press-critic-to-press-critic, that my scooping his paper by using an incident that had happened to me , in my own column, was 'not honorable.'

"As a press critic myself, Johnston told me, I should have known this. Also, I'd better not tell anyone about his unsolicited opinion. That was a secret.

"I have no patience for these imposed confidentiality deals. Over the years, various journalists besides Johnston have sent me e-mails that basically say this:

" Hello. Although you have not asked for my opinion, I would like to tell you what I think of you. But I suspect, on some level, that this makes me sound like a pompous git. So you are hereby ordered to keep my insults to you secret. If you disobey, you have violated our non-agreement and are therefore unethical .

"So I put my e-mail exchange with Johnston on my blog."

Fair or unfair? You make the call.

Runaway groom? It's bad enough when you call off your wedding a week before the event, but if you're a TV reporter, you wind up in the gossip column .