hardballs

Get Off Junk Mail Lists With Blitz Calling
This is an awesome new tactic for getting off junk mail lists. I just learned it from Phillip, a Consumerist reader I met at the Consumers Union Activist Summit, who is eating a sandwich next to me. He calls it "Blitz Calling" and he's used it to successfully get off seven different junk mail lists that initially tried to ignore him. More »

Pledge 1 Hour To Fight The Man
Consumer action reporter hero Bob Sullivan is doing a neat thing today, it's called the "Red Tape Fight Pledge!" Just pledge to spend one hour this month standing up for your rights by publicly posting your commitment here. Then do it and come back and tell everyone how you did. The stories will be used in an upcoming MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles story. Cool, I have a few fees that I've been meaning to get around to fighting, this could be the perfect little kick in the pants to get me started.

Red Tape Fight Pledge [Facebook] More »

The Debtor Debt Collectors Hate To Call
Craig Cunningham has made $20,000 from 18 lawsuits he's filed against debt collectors for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). In fact, it's something a part-time job/hobby for him. To ensnare his first FDCPA-violating collector, with voice recorder running, he called back the number they left on his answering machine, and asked: More »

What Happened With Operation Chokehold
So what ended up happening with "Operation Chokehold," the plan last Friday to protest unreliable iPhone coverage by having a bunch of people simultaneously run a bunch of data-intensive apps to bring the AT&T network to its knees? We'll tell ya. More »

Operation Chokehold: AT&T Users To Protest Slow Network By Simultaneously Running Data-Intensive Apps This Friday, 3pm Eastern
Sick of AT&T's unreliability and dropped calls, participants in this Friday's "Operation Chokehold" are plotting an act of consumer disobedience to bring the network "to its knees." More »

Man Pays Best Buy For Washer/Dryer, It Doesn't Appear, Takes Laundry To Store, Shames Store Into Delivering
After Best Buy blew two delivery dates on the washer/dryer he paid $1,600 for at Best Buy on Black Friday to arrive, a man decided to take his dirty laundry to the store. He had unhooked his washer/dryer at home in anticipation of the new appliances and wanted to know which washer of theirs they wanted him to wash his clothes in while he waited for his. His buddies videotaped the adventure. This plan didn't go ever so hot with Best Buy management. Let's roll the clip:

7 Steps To Reach Executive Customer Service At Any Company
If you can't find the executive customer service phone number for a company by searching on Consumerist, here's how to figure it out yourself. All it takes are 7 easy steps!

Freya Sings In Swedish To Get Volvo To Replace Faulty Transmission
—>Using a Viking helmet, her blog, and the dulcet sounds of her original Swedish folklore compositions, Freya Svensson is waging a war against Volvo, and winning.  More »

Epic: Kindle 2 Fails Man's Drop Test, Forces Amazon To Pay Him $400
Paul bought a Kindle 2 from Amazon. He dropped it one day, and it sort of broke but not entirely, and Amazon wanted $200 to replace it. Instead, he got them to send him a $400 check, while still keeping the device. How?
Paul is generally speaking a very smart cookie, plus he went to law school, so he sent them a very strongly worded letter noting that Amazon falsely indicated the device's durability in a video (embedded here) that shows it falling to the ground unharmed This is the amazing letter he sent them:

Paul Gowder

[Address omitted]
August 12, 2009
Amazon.com Inc.

Legal Department

1200 12th Avenue South

Suite 1200

Seattle, WA 98144-2734
Dear Sir or Madam:
On June 21, 2009, I purchased an Kindle 2 e-book reader from the Amazon.com website. I purchased this device based, in substantial part, on the expectation that it would be reasonably durable. In particular, I expected that it would be approximately as durable as is ordinary in the consumer electronics market.
Amazon.com advertises the Kindle 2 on the basis of its durability. Notably, Amazon.com displays a "drop test" video on the web page for this product. That video displays the device being dropped twice from thirty inches onto what appears to be tile. That video displays a fall with sufficient force that the device visibly bounces, and deliberately creates the impression that the device will function after impacts similar to that sequence of drops.
Despite those representations, the Kindle 2 is far less durable. On July 26, 2009, I dropped a messenger bag containing the device onto the sidewalk, from approximately two feet above the ground. It was dropped only once, and the messenger bag absorbed enough of the shock that nothing else in the bag, including a Macbook laptop, suffered any damage whatsoever. (Unlike the drop displayed in Amazon.com's video, for example, nothing actually bounced.) Moreover, there was no visible damage on the exterior of the Kindle 2. Nonetheless, the Kindle 2 became completely unusable, with over 50% of its screen no longer able to display any text.
I called Amazon.com support and was told that, because of the accidental drop, you would not be willing to supply a replacement device under warranty. You did, however, offer to sell a new device at a discount, for $200.00. I took advantage of that offer under protest, and explicitly reserved my rights to bring a claim against you based on the unreasonable fragility of the device and the misrepresentations in your advertising. It is that claim that forms the subject of this letter.
I am prepared to offer an immediate settlement of my claims against Amazon.com for a payment of $400.00. That sum represents the $200.00 replacement fee I paid plus $200.00 to compensate me for the diminution of utility and value of the device as well as of the e-books I have purchased for that device, in light of the fact that the replacement device, too, can be expected to be far more fragile than advertised and prone to destruction under the slightest stress. This offer expires thirty days from your receipt of this letter. If you do not accept this offer, I intend to bring suit either individually, or, if I decide it is warranted, as representative for a class of similarly situated plaintiffs. At that time, I will seek the amount noted above, plus punitive damages under the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Cal. Civil Code �1750 et. seq., costs, fees, and such other monetary damages as provided for by law, including without limitation Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code �17200 et. seq., the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and other relevant law.
Also, you have demanded the return of the broken device as a condition to the unreasonable discounted replacement offer which I accepted under protest. Your agent has informed me that you will charge my credit card for the full price if the broken device is not returned to you. I am considering seeking a protective order placing that device in the custody of the Court pending litigation. However, should I instead return the device, you are hereby notified that it is evidence in the anticipated litigation to which this letter refers. Should you modify, destroy, or resell the broken device, I will ask the Court to treat that as deliberate spoliation of evidence and make adverse inferences as appropriate.
Very truly yours,
Paul Gowder

<- And this letter is Amazon completely surrendering.Savvy. It's a great example of having all your facts lined up, knowing exactly what you want from them, and not making your request too outrageous. And Paul's not the only one to have problems with Kindle screen breakage.
Sure, who believes advertising? The thing is, there is an allowance for puffery in advertising, but the drop test video goes beyond puffery (i.e. "The greatest car ever!" Or "World's #1 Gold Buyer!) and creates the warranty that a Kindle 2 can survive as high a drop onto a hard surface. As one commenter said, "If you are at a fast food place and a picture of a hamburger has a bun, cheese, and lettuce on it you expect the hamburger to come with those items on it." If Amazon can't live up, they gotta pay up.
Kindle 2: fragile piece of shit or overpriced fragile piece of shit? [Uncommon Priors]

The Kindle War Begins [Uncommon Priors]

This is what victory looks like. [Uncommon Priors]
More »

How To Use Twitter To Get A Company To Solve Your Problem

—>Here's a new trick for getting satisfaction from a reluctant company, using Twitter. We can call this one "tweet to power."  More »

Threat Of Small Claims Court Gets Wells Fargo Overdrafts Refunded

—>After he got some overdraft fees that he felt were unfair, Karney Hatch decided to put the banking system on trial, and make a documentary about it.   More »

Man Tells Fax Spammers To Go Fax Themselves... And They Comply
Pat is our consumer action hero of the week. He writes: More »

Professional Complaint Letter Writer Shares His Secrets
"Praise with faint damn" is the underlying secret to how professional complaint letter writer Bruce Silverman is able to be so successful in getting companies to give him free stuff. First class upgrades, Room upgrades with views of frolicking whales, Checks for hundreds of dollars... all these and more are the fruits of Bruce's calculated typewriter clacking. Now Bruce has come out with a small book with a big promise: to teach you How To Complaint For Fun And Profit. Here's a chapter from it, exclusively on The Consumerist, detailing how he was able to turn a disappointing experience at the Ritz-Carlton in Hawaii into a long-term stream of room upgrades, comped meals, and decidedly above and beyond customer service...

Interview With Ron Burley, Customer Service Avenger

—>"There's only one leverage any consumer has with a company. And that's financial." So says Ron Burley, author of UNSCREWED: The Consumer's Guide To Getting What You Paid For. I got to interview Ron Burley to plumb his brain about his customer satisfaction hacks, and the current state of affairs of customer service. His techniques are bold and make no apologies. We're not talking letters, and forms, and complaint departments. These are real methods for real people that work real fast. He also goes into the mindset that you need to develop if you're going to get results. Bookmark this post, it's an epic barnburner. Transcript, inside...  More »

Mind F*ck Used To Get Debt Collector To Stop Calling Wrong Number
A reader tells us how he got a debt collector who kept calling looking for someone else to stop calling, by turning the privacy invasion tables on him and freaking him out."Washington Mutual kept calling my phone for the past 3 weeks, about 10 times a day and I usually just hang up. But this time I made the person identify himself, where he was at..."

Suing Big Companies In Small Claims Court Is Fun And Easy
Taking a big company to small claims court sounds like a big hassle but reader Bill has done it successfully three times. He says the time and effort spent on taking a company to small claims court is far less then how it long it takes to get companies to fix above-average in complexity problems.Here's his typical expenditure for a small claims suit: $24 and 45 minutes. The $24 is the cost to file a claim. The 45 minutes includes his total time of driving to and from court to file, as well as the time spent on the phone with the company when they call to settle.See, in all cases, he hasn't even had to go to court: the company calls him up the day before the court date and gives him a settlement. It seems they prefer to do that then pay to fly a company representative who isn't fully versed on all the facts to court. Here's his true story of how he got what he deserved from Tmobile and Washington Mutual, without breaking a sweat.

What To Say When You Call The CEO's Office

—>This classic article on the art of "turboing," escalating your problem to the executive's office, has some great advice about what to say when you get there. Here's a line Rob Levandowski, himself a former Tier 2 XEROX customer service rep, uses to get his foot in the door once he reaches the CEO's secretary:  More »

Seagate Issue Resolved After Posting Complaint Along With Executive Email Addresses On Company's Own Site

Shawn has a nice success story with the Seagate company that provides an interesting twist on the EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bomb) technique that we've been telling you about for months:

I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB external harddrive about two or three months ago, and backed up several harddrives to it. Everything was going awesome on every computer I had, but then it had an issue on my desktop. "Delayed Write Failure" WHAT? I try to read the information on the drive, it won't allow me.

  More »

How To Mind Control Customer Service Reps

—>Reader Lona says that people in her family have called her a consumer advocate since she was sixteen, and now she is going to share with us 2,177 words on the customer service tactics and techniques she uses to get satisfaction. She writes, "in 99% of situations, it allows you to reach an agreeable solution to almost any problem. It is something I do for family and friends, and for myself." Some of her methods have been mentioned in various ways on the site before but others are completely unique. And by the time you read her true success story at the end, you'll swear she has Jedi mind-control over customer service reps. It boils down to, without raising your voice, asserting control over the conversation from the beginning and then never relinquishing that power.  More »

Question Customer Service Authority

"Normally travelers will take whatever someone says. Challenge it. I'll say, 'I know how airports work and I know where the bag is.'" Mr. Tucci advises being kind and polite but assertive. "When it's an emergency, I don't obey the rules. I'll go to the front of the queue. Do what you need to do."  More »