that is awesome... too bad it wasn't a truly evil company like comcast or at&t- of course they wouldn't have paid then

Incredistory, just awesome win-ness. However, it's an isolated case and I doubt we'll see more of the same any time soon. Also, advertising that this process can work might start an innundation of similar requests, which could also kill this process cold.

I almost billed a dentist for making me wait 90 minutes beyond my scheduled appointment. But, his assistant was a cutie and I wanted to keep going back, and I feared he'd fire me as a client if I billed him.

I know the Consumerist is a big advocate of small claims court. Is there any recorded case of a consumer taking a company to court over a case of shockingly bad service which led to large amounts of time lost, and making them pay for the time?

[Original Article:] "Schaffer is in the third year of a five-year contract with the telecommunciations company and said it would be more trouble than it would be worth to try to walk away from it."

I'd think he'd have some grounds to walk away from the contract after his debacle. I would, and not continue to do business with a company that had to be forced into "doing the right thing" by bad publicity.

[Original Article:] "It included $158.85 to reimburse his employees for cell phone use, and another $115.92 to pay Glennpeter Jewelers for use of its phone line."

So using cell phones was cheaper than his phone bill would have been anyhow?

AT&T sent my mom through a gauntlet of incompetence, lies, and powerless drones after their upgraded phones refused to activate. After dealing with the morons for several, documented hours on the phone, and being without cell service for over a month, they agreed to generous service credits.

While sending a bill and getting paid for it is certainly stimulating, you don't have to act like a collections department to get whats owed to you.

I think this is a little different than you're average consumer dealing with bad service from Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T. This is B2B, there's a contract involved, there are other phone companies interested in his business - it makes sense that his vendor made things right by reimbursing the firm. Also, there's a rate basis for Schaffer's reimbursement - his billing rate - whereas there isn't for the home consumer.

So good for him, but I'm not getting my hopes up that I can pull the same thing the next time my cable goes out.

Little Guy: 1
Corporate America: 0

@opsomath: Isn't that the only way to get restitution from small claims court? I don't think small claims court will do "suffering and anguish", only a listed sum.

My Mom did this to one of her doctors who made her wait EVERY time she had an appointment(Once or twice is OK, as maybe he's seeing someone real quick as a favor, and he'd do the same for you). She never waited after that.

In that case, Sears owed me a couple grand.

I didn't get anything that large, but I once went back to Burger King after one screwed up my takeout order. The receipt listed the right order, but the items in the bag were wrong.

I got the money back first, ordered the same again, then before paying told the manager I wanted him to cover my taxi fare for having to return to fix their mistake. It wasn't far (about $3), but their screwup cost me time on my lunch hour.

If he hadn't agreed to cover it, I would have been out the taxi fare and had no food, but he would have had a $5 order unsold going to waste and I had already gotten my original money back. If he did cover it, he would lose about 2/3rds of the revenue, while I gained nothing more than I was originally willing to pay.

He chose the smarter option and ate the loss.

I live in Schenectady (approximately 3-5 miles west of Colonie) and the IBOC (primary telco) here is Verizon. If you get telephone service from a CLEC (any other telco) in this area, (aside from Time-Warner, who own their own infrastructure) you are in for a bumpy ride. Verizon owns all of the infrastructure and seem to become astonishingly incompetent when provisioning for someone else.

...at least that's my experience living in this geographic area.

Well it also seems like this was a business account, as the poster refers to having his employees have to use cell phones etc.

You are far more likely to see something done on an account like this rather then on a residential

@rpm773:
If it goes out for a long amount of time (Weeks), then by all means you should try to obtain a deduction of a corresponding percentage from you bill. More if the problem was on their end but they insist it was yours and put you through hoops.

@CapitalC:
This round, maybe.

Total? They have millions.

I bill $25.00 for each time a company tells me they have a billing problem. I do get it. Its the cost of a check to print and send to them. I started doing this back in 96 when MCI said I did not pay the bill and B of A wanted that in some kind of fee (I do not remember what it was called).

As of last year I also charge a $5.00 fee to pay the bill or the fee they charge me to bill me. I get it each time, I do have to fight with them at the start but each time in the end they take off their fee or just send me a check a week after getting my money.

I use their own rules on them.

This guy had a contract. 20 bucks says he was running a call center.

...er my point being that they lost a of of money with the phones being down. I used to work IT support at a small call center where we would often lose our phone service.

I wonder what would have happened if he just sent them an invoice?

I've done this (successfully) with a couple of utilities companies in Germany. I'd notified them (in timely manner) of a change in bank account details and they still tried to charge the old account and tried to hit me with late payment/refused payment charges etc.
I wrote to them (to the CFO, actuall), included my letter to them, their confirmation back to me and billed them each for the equivalent of $50 for my time.
Both paid up meekly.
Always worth a try.

@mariospants: At the same time, it requires a lot of effort on the customer's part (taking detailed notes, recording times and so on and so forth). Most people won't bother.

@ScottRose: The thing is though he is probably running a PBX system and with that you can have lines for all your employees. So if you tally up all the lines he has for his business thats where the charge comes from.

So yes, using a cell phone might be cheaper but if you want to be professional then a PBX is the way to get it done.

This really is every customer's dream to get the money back for time they've had to waste dealing with poor service. I wonder how people who stand outside in line feel for iPhones? Do they bill themselves for time?

[www.nestseekers.com]

@opsomath: I was wondering the same thing while I read this...

I once had a piece of office furniture delivered with the carton and some contents badly damaged. The company said it would take more than a week to pick up the damaged item. I didn't have enough space to hold it for a week, so I told them I would charge the company a storage fee. They picked it up the next day.

@P_Smith: i think the manager was overly generous. precedent seems to say that a fast-food restaurant will replace a messed up order, but not compensate for incidental expenses. doing otherwise can encourage others to try the same at his store.

It's the same logic behind a credit card company sending you a bill for 25 cents: it might cost them more than that just to mail the envelope, but it discourages other people from attempting to game the system.

In other words, what might seem like the smart economic decision in one instance might actually be the wrong business decision because of the precedent it sets.

What are the tax implications on that?

@TheGuinnessTooth:
I'd be afraid he'd go extra light on the novacaine the next time I needed a filling.

You all need a Pre-Paid Legal Plan. Having an attorney at your back, to make phone calls and write letters is awesome! I use mine all the time. Got a hospital bill changed from $11,800.00 to $3,300.00!!! An attorneys letter goes to the legal department...yours goes to customer service...BIG waste of time. If your interested check out my website www.prepaidlegal.com/info/outreach, it's just pennies a day!

I wanted to bill on line bookstore for not sending my order on time. But started to worry that they may just bill me for the order and NEVER send me the book. So I gave up, and gave myself the book after Christmas. Itwas worth it, great book; The Fourth Sapphire Tablet of Malkhytzedek Tuthamenhaten - dreams. Now I sleep well.

Little different....power company,not phone company. I worked for a radio station in Western Washington State. Post office changed sorting areas and everything got goofed up for 3-4 weeks. The local power company called our receptionist and threatened to turn off our electricity. I told her to send the call to me if it happened again. Sure enough, next day I get the call. I asked for her name and her supervisers name...then told her to please come "pull our plug"...because, then she and her supervisor would lose their jobs. The radio station is part of the Civil Defence Network and that makes it a federal offence of turn off the power. (Especially if the post office is to blame/check showed up next day post marked 3-weeks earlier). Hope you enjoyed this...It was great to nail the establishment once in my life. Good Luck to you.

_Big John

i sat on the phone for 3 hrs on a house phone and about the same on a cell phone waiting for t mobile..and thier reply to me was....we see no money value to it..sorry for your inconvience though..after they shut off my phone cuz i was in raom..but they had just sent me a upgrade phone to the ame address i had lived at ..for a year

If I have to waid for more than 20 minutes even in the doctors office I walk out! As far as these companies, the mail problem is that when you call them you never get anyone in the US. I insist that I talk to a US based rep! Does the trick every time

I think their is a law a gas, cable or phone Company lose server for a Set Number of Hours IE 24 hrs that provider must credit your account for the power Company if you food go bad they have to pay it.

I am not a Lawyer but I think their something on
the law Books.

He is not the first one. I started billing AT&T last year for spending over 10 hours per month on the phone with them. They have records of all the time I have talked to them and I finally said, Im charging you from now on. My time is very valuable. They know it is now. It slows down the incompetence on their end for sure.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Agreed to pay it is not the same as paid it.

They will wait for the publicity to die down then refuse to pay. It would be cheaper for them to lose him as a customer than pay.

@Brandon Zeman: I had a similar problem with Nextel, they sold me a phone that would not work on my network, it was a hybrid phone which wasn't ready to use on the nextel network but rather the Sprint network, I went through hell trying to get some idiot to understand the problem, it took me 3 months of fighting with Nextel for them to understand the problem, I ended up with ONLY 1 free month of service and sent the phone back and STILL charged $329.99 for the phone which was NOT credited to my account until the warehouse received the phone and put it in the system that it was actually received. All the while I had the tracking # and the date the store sent the phone back, but they wouldn't credit me until they were good and ready and in the process my phones were shut off because of non payment of the new phone that I sent back and I was charged a reconnect fee...I got more "I am sorry but's" then I have ever heard in my entire life. I have been a true Nextel customer for 7 years and this is the treatment I get? It took me months to get my bill straightened out after that because you can't talk to anyone in person, it has to be over the phone and most of those idiots can't speak english!!! YES I am still a Nextel customer because the OTHER phone I bought works and I had to up my contract for another 2 years!

I had AT&T Credit me $175.00 for time I wasted on a Saturday afternoon waiting for an IPhone that they said I didn't qualify for because I had a discount code on my phone plan (It was funny because I already owned an IPhone for one of my other lines). I told them I wasted 1/2 hour drive each way to the Apple store and 2 hours standing in line at the store to walk away with nothing. I think it's only fair if these companies waste your time they should compensate you for it.

I wish I could bill my psychoanalyst when she makes me wait in the waiting room for a half hour into my appointment. She bills me when I cancel, why can't I bill her when she uses up half my appointment?

Trying dealing with Missouri Division of Child Support they took too much money out of my banking account and still won't put the money back after they admitted they made a mistake. Way to go Howard!!!

I took a major telephone co to small claims court twice and collected the approx $10,000, though collecting it was the more difficult part. The co. erroneously billed me for DSL and a second phone line, neither of which I asked for(nor owned a computer). They were threatening to turn off my primary phone line. I billed for lost time from work, various fees and penalties, etc. Document all dates, times, and the gist of what transpired.

For all of you people cheering about this guy sticking it to man, and all that jazz, just remember this story the next time your phone bill goes up, or when your electric bill goes up, or your hamburger costs an extra dime.

When you stick it to the man, you always end up sticking it to yourself. Someone will have to pay for this. And it won't be the company.

I had a similar experience while trying to switch from Earthlink DSL to AT&T DSL service. I spent about 25 hours on the phone over a two week period while having to deal with a dial-up line for service. After all of the fiasco, I returned to Earthlink DSL and finally got the service set up after two weeks. I have never dealt with so many incompetent people in my life. It seems that most every company is off-shoring their customer service to India or someplace else and not properly training the service people. I have since had to deal with billing people to get the proper billing and credits to my account.

lmao..in the 80's I billed my OB-GYN for a three hour wait, my time, plus babysitters time, wrote it up just as a business would and sent it off...I got a phone call a few days later, and was ALWAYS seen at once, or called way in advance if he had an emergency!

Get a frickin' clue, people. The article has nothing to do with the headline. The man didn't bill for wasted time, he collected for EXPENSES actually accrued when the phone company didn't meet its contractual obligations (binding, not like residential service). The headline would have you believe that he billed for his TIME. What a poor piece of "journalism".

OMG... Yahoo! lead story with a direct link-in getting over 10k story views per minute right now...

Most bloggers labor away in quiet obscurity. ANd then there's Meghann...

When my electric company sent me a notice that instructed me I had to read my own meter, I called and asked why. I was told no one is ever home, we work, and the meter was inside the home. So I told them they could remount it out side, send someone on the weekends at no charge or pay me at my rate, $150 an hour. They now send someone on the weekends.

Same thing happened to me (but different) I ordered comcast.. they gave me an apptdate & time ..no one showed up . I lost a day of work .. I called . They rescheduled I asked for my old phone # they came and installed comcast..they set me up with a different #... I called to have it corrected.. The old # was disconected . I was not capabel of recieving calls for over a week .. I had to wait a week before I got my old # reconnected. Comcast gave me credit for 30.00 In the meantime I was getting calls from the previous owner of my new #.. sometimes @ 3:00 A.M. . The prior owner of the # had collection agencies calling me asking where she was. I asked how that would equate to my days without phone service..Thats all they would offer .. I got poor customer service>>I will never forget it.