RCRWireless reprinted part of T-Mobile's response:

“Although your letter states that carriers’ prices for text messaging appear to have increased since 2005, the opposite is true,” states Robert Dotson, president and CEO of T-Mobile USA Inc. “Since 2005, the prices that T-Mobile charges for text messages — 90% of which are purchased in texting package plans — have fallen by more than half.

AT&T came right out and (almost) blamed Senator Kohl for the spate of lawsuits:

“As you probably know, since your letter was made public, 20 class-action lawsuits have been filed around the country against AT&T and other national carriers, specifically alleging price-fixing for texting messaging services. All but one of these cases cite your inquiry as one of the bases of alleged collusion. We are therefore eager to clear up any misunderstanding,” said Timothy McKone, executive VP for federal relations at AT&T.

If fees for text messaging bundles have dropped, while fees for single-serve text messages have shot up 20 cents, then in a way both sides are right—but if that's the case, we think the carriers are being intentionally dense about the true meaning of the Senator's line of questioning, which (we think) is an attempt to determine whether the carriers colluded to hike individual rates enough to drive customers into more profitable bundle services.

Wireless carriers counter antitrust concerns over rising costs of texting [RCRWireless]
(Photo: Getty Images)

Travis writes:

My wife talked to Tom [at USAA] and he said he would get someone to call her that specifically looked into these problems. Steve McCoy, Assistant Vice President with Specialized Member Services called her today [26 Sep 2008] and was very understanding and listened to her. He also did what 90% of the rest of the businesses should do when in USAA's position, he apologized. It's hard to be mad at someone when they sincerely apologize, and the wife is a forgiving woman.

USAA has now updated their website to show they are experiencing technical problems with their web page but are working to fix them. We appreciate the response from USAA and the help from the Consumerist!

In fact, we received a tip today from another reader confirming that USAA has indeed updated their site to warn customers not to panic if something looks off. Virginia writes:

I logged on to pay a bill and they've posted a notice about problems displaying investments accounts.

(Photo: law_kevin)

This was left as a comment on the original post yesterday afternoon.

This is a response from Quality Van Line Management directly. First and foremost we last spoke to Cori about a week ago, and he was making an outrageous demand for money and threatened us by saying that if we do not pay him what he wants he will immediately try to ruin our business reputation and start making us look as bad as he can on the internet. If we were to give him the money, he would be happy with the service and the situation would be over. Obviously, we did not.

Regarding the facts, the job was picked up on July 31, 2008 and delivered on August 8, 2008. Within contracts Cori and Ali signed and were well aware of, we had 7-14 BUSINESS days to deliver the furniture, it arrived in 5 BUSINESS days, which is in fact an early delivery. After delivery Cori came to us with complaints of damages. By law we have a claim department that handles these issues and we give a valuation with signing up with our company of $0.60 per lb per article. Before signing up with us you are more than welcome to buy additional insurance, Cori chose not to do that. Therefore, he went to the claims department for damages and recieved an offer of $288.00 for reimbursement. He was not happy with this and refused, he called us back and said he wanted $800.00 back for his inconvienences, stress, and lack of professionalism in his opinion. He did understand the reasons the quote went up and had no problem paying for that, it was just his stress upon delivery he decided $288.00 would not be enough. We offered to make it $350.00 just to satisfy his demands, and he declined once again and told us in these exact words, "Your company will be sorry".

We have all legal documents of Cori and Ali complying to the terms of the move, and understanding the contracts. This complaint is coming directly out of spite because a customer is not getting what they wants, it is our job to make sure every customer gets everything they deserved by the law and the terms of moving policy.

Read the original post and ensuing comments here.

Here's their email:

We fixed the error on iPod pricing on our website this morning. And anyone who bought at the wrong price is going to be refunded without asking, no matter how long ago they purchased. Plus we are sending them a $10 gift card so they can add some tunes to their new iPod.

Thanks to your reader for pointing out the mistake. Apple changed prices and discontinued some models with their latest upgrades, and our system—for a reason we have fixed—didn't reflect that.

Inflated prices are not in our repertoire. Actually, getting gear in musicians' hands at the lowest possible price is what we are all about. We appreciate the fair shake we got from The Consumerist. Keep up the good work. No problem will ever appear on your site that we do anything other than solve

I wanted to follow up with you about my situation with Advantage Rent-A-Car and the "diminution of value" charge. I called Lauren Wilson [the director of sales and Marketing]. Lauren listened to my story, took down my info, and said she would look into it and get back to me.

Within minutes, she emailed me saying that she had spoken with the Chairman and Owner of the company, Denny Hecker, and that he was interested in speaking with me. We scheduled a call for the following day.

When I spoke with Denny he was polite and understanding. He understood my frustration, but was concerned about my perception that "diminution of value" was a scam. He explained that when cars are damaged, they are unable to sell them back to the dealer under their contracts, and that they can lose money. I listened, explained that I understood the principle, but that I felt that the charges were unreasonably high. Denny said that he wanted to look into the situation on his end, which was understandable since the issue had just been brought to his attention the day before.

Long story short, Denny and I spoke again and Denny decided that he was going to wave the entire thing - not just the ~$2500 in diminution of value, but the ~$4500 in repair charges as well. He said that customers are very important to him, and that he wanted to ensure that I left a happy customer. I thanked him, but insisted that I (through Visa) cover the damages to the vehicle. After all, the vehicle was damaged and I had no problem being responsible for the physical damage. Denny and I had a laugh, he explained that he wouldn't turn my money down, but that he wanted to be clear that he was willing to walk away from the the entire thing. That it was that important to him. I said I understood, but would pay the damages, just not the diminution of value. Done.

While obviously I would have preferred to have never gone through this, I was impressed with the way Lauren and Denny handled it. At the end of the day everyone makes mistakes, people and businesses, and in many cases what's important is how the mistakes are handled. Advantage's mistake here was contracting with Subrogation Management Team, which profits off Advantage's customers, and not keeping close tabs in the impact this has on their reputation. In this case, in my opinion, Advantage made a mistake but when confronted with it, Denny went above and beyond by offering to wave the entire charge, including the physical damage. He also indicated that he would be reviewing their relationship with SMT.

All-in-all I will probably give Advantage Rent-a-Car another shot and rent from them again, though this time I will probably buy the insurance :)

It's always interesting to see how the people at the top behave when confronted with unfair business practices. Now if only they could find a way to pass that one-to-one sense of customer service downstream to every customer.

We're glad Paul was able to get the outrageous $2500 charge waived, because it was calculated by assuming that 49 hours in the shop somehow equaled 22 days of labor. We just hope that whether the fault lies with Subrogation Management or Advantage, they fix it so others aren't hit with the same high fees.

(Thanks to Paul and Debbie!)
(Photo: Getty)

Now it reads,

Your questions and concerns are very important to us.

In an effort to provide a faster response, and to ensure your personal security, we ask that you please use our online chat (available on most pages in the upper right corner), call or visit us at one of our retail locations. This will ensure the most complete and timely response to your questions and concerns.

Well, at least now they've provided an explanation (and there's at least one reader who agrees with them).

Remember, if you've tried to resolve a problem with your Qwest account and haven't had any luck, you can always try one of the people listed in their corporate directory.

(Photo: Getty)

Deepak writes:

With all the bad press airlines have been receiving of late, here's a positive story for you. My wife & I were on a flight back to Seattle from Oakland a few weeks ago (Aug 10th). Almost immediately after take off, the pilot came on the intercom and said that a pressure sensor had gone off, and we had to go back to Oakland. After a collective groan from everybody on board, we turned back around and landed. They kept us on the plane for a short amount of time while the mechanic examined the issue. He apparently determined it wasn't fixable in short order, so they deplaned us, and put us on another plane. All in all, the delay was maybe 2 hours tops, and everybody at Southwest was very nice, as were all of the passengers.

So we arrive in Seattle a couple of hours later than expected, no big deal for us at all, given it was a Sunday afternoon, and we weren't in a rush to get anyplace but home. A week or so later, we each received the following letter from Melissa Chalupa, Assistant Manager, Proactive Customer Service Communications. Sorry I don't have a scanner, so I'm transcribing it instead. Included with this letter was a $175 voucher for Southwest!

I'm already a pretty loyal Southwest customer, but this was an unexpected (to me at least) gesture!

Southwest's letter:

I'm sorry for the unexpected circumstances surrounding the disruption of your Aug 10 flight from Oakland. In addition to my apologies, I'd like to provide you with some information about what happened that afternoon.

Shortly after takeoff, the Pilots received a low pressure indication for one of the two independent hydraulic systems (A&B) on the aircraft. In response to this situation the Captain returned to have the aircraft inspected. In this case, the problem was with the A hydraulic System - there was a fluid leak. After speaking with our Maintenance Department, I learned that the supply line which helps operate one of the movable panels on the aircraft's wing surface was leaking hydraulic fluid, and as such, the corresponding line was then replaced to fix the problem.

Thank you for your patience while alternate flight arrangements were made to continue your trip. With the hope that you will grant us the opportunity to prove there are better experiences to have with us, I'm sending a LUV Voucher to each person who was onboard your flight that we invite you to apply toward future Southwest reservations. We truly appreciate your valued patronage, and we look forward to welcoming you back again real soon.

Kind Regards
Melissa Chalupa

Enclose : One Southwest LUV Voucher.

Compare Southwest's response to U.S. Airways'. The situations are obviously different, but Southwest is practically eager to throw around vouchers to keep customers happy. As we've seen, happy customers mean profitable companies. The difference is just one of the reasons U.S. Airways' profit plummeted by almost 20% last quarter, while Southwest's soared 11%.

PREVIOUSLY: Above And Beyond: Southwest Melts Customer's Heart After Deicing Snafu
Retain 5% More Customers, Reap 35-95% More Profit
How To Beat The Stock Market: Buy Companies With High Customer Satisfaction Scores
(Photo: dooleymtv)

I'm the director of digital communications at Time Warner Cable, and I'd like to bring some clarity to this discussion. We're happy to to take our lumps when we've earned them, but it doesn't seem to be the case in this instance.

Take a look at some of the traceroutes posted to the thread in question ... starting here, at comment #446: http://tinyurl.com/5gqe27

If you follow the commenter's posted trace results, you'll notice that it's only on TWC's Roadrunner (rr) network for the first 6 hops — with maximum response times of 10 ms. The response time jumps drastically at hop # 11 — when the trace is no longer on the Roadrunner network.

Scroll down further on the same page to comment #456, and you'll see something similar — a giant leap in lag times. However, this trace never touches our network. It starts at Verizon, goes to Alter.net at hop #5, and then jumps to ATT.net's network at hop #8. Hop #9 shows a response time of 114 ms — quite a jump from the 49ms at hop #8.

On the first page of the thread, you'll see something similar: http://tinyurl.com/3hfs9k

At comment #10, the lag time leaps from 18ms on our network at hop #6 to 150ms at hop #7 — on Level3, an Internet backbone.

At comment #18 (same page), the trace again never touches our network. The lag jumps from 15 ms at hop #3 to 261 ms at hop #4, while on the Verizon network. The hops vacillate between high and low response times throughout the trace.

Blizzard's comment at the top of the thread that "Unfortunately this means that the only commonality between all the players experiencing these disconnects and extreme latency is Time Warner/Road Runner" is a pretty interesting choice of words, in light of the fact that several of the troublesome traceroutes posted in the forum itself never touch our network.

Jeff Simmermon
Director, Digital Communications
Time Warner Cable

So, is Blizzard just trying to pass the buck to the best available scapegoat? If both companies aren't responsible for the lags and disconnects, whos is? Does anyone know how this crazy Internet works?

(Photo: ashley_dryden)

"We at MAD were shocked and confused by this entire incident — mainly because we had no idea that Circuit City even sells magazines. Nonetheless, we accept their apology but hold out hope that their gesture of a $20 gift card is only an opening offer."

Har hars all around, yolks.

Circuit City Rethinks MAD Magazine Ban, Apologizes [Newsarama]
PREVIOUSLY

Hi, Ben,

I spotted the article about Circuit City and MAD Magazine on your site.

fyi, I became aware of this "situation" only this morning, and I have sent a note today to the Editors of MAD Magazine.

Speaking as "an embarrassed corporate PR Guy," I apologized for the fact that some overly-sensitive souls at our corporate headquarters ordered the removal of the August issue of MAD Magazine from our stores. Please keep in mind that only 40 of our 700 stores sell magazines at all.

The parody of our newspaper ad in the August MAD was very clever. Most of us at Circuit City share a rich sense of humor and irony...but there are occasional temporary lapses.

We apologize for the knee-jerk reaction, and have issued a retraction order; the affected stores are being directed to put the magazines back on sale.

As a gesture of our apology and deep respect for the folks at MAD Magazine, we are creating a cross-departmental task force to study the importance of humor in the corporate workplace and expect the resulting Powerpoint presentation to top out at least 300 pages, chock full of charts, graphs and company action plans.

In addition I have offered to send the MAD Magazine Editor a $20.00 Circuit City Gift Card, toward the purchase of a Nintendo Wii....if he can find one!

All the best,

Jim Babb
Corporate Communications
Circuit City Stores, Inc.
Richmond, VA

Let's evaluate it on the 3-step system for fixing corporate gaffes:

1. Admitted they were wrong
2. Stopped doing the wrong thing
3. Made a material gesture of apology

Check check and check on all three, plus points for speed. You go, girls.

PREVIOUSLY: Circuit City Orders All Stores To Destroy Issue Of Mad Magazine Parodying "Sucker City"

UPDATE: Circuit City Sorry For Commanding Employees To Destroy Mad Mag's "Sucker City" Parody

The spoof:

The response:

What's wrong Circuit City? It's funny because it's true!

Issue #492 [Mad Magazine]

Josh writes:

Hi guys...

My name is Josh, and a friend of mine suggested that I might come to you guys for some help. I've kind of engaged in some letter writing to the Krystal corporation all thanks to the restaurant down the road, and I seem to be being ignored. It's weird; I don't actually want anything from Krystal - all I want is an apology, or even an acknowledgment that someone's bothering to read the complaint letter department. Anyways, I've written about it on my own blog, and he suggested I might try you guys. So here goes nothing.

I live in Donelson, Tennessee (a suburb of Nashville), right down the street from a Krystal. I love Krystals - for those of you not from the South, they're very similar to White Castle burgers. Anyways, the Krystal down the street from me is pretty incompetent. Really, really incompetent. To the point where I finally did something I'd never done in my life, and I wrote a letter. Went to their website, found the complaint form, and wrote the following:

To whom it may concern:

I genuinely feel that you may be missing out on a magnificent opportunity to get some press for your Krystal restaurant in Donelson, Tennessee. It is rare that you see a fast food franchise attempt to take on such a massive challenge as this one, and even rarer to find them succeeding.

You see, there is an old phrase, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." The idea is to show that every person or organization, no matter how incompetent, how wrong-headed, is not wrong 100% of the time. It's a noble, optimistic saying.

Your Donelson Krystal restaurant has taken on the considerable challenge of proving this saying wrong, and they seem to be succeeding (so to speak) magnificently. Of my last five trips to this Krystal, all but one of them have necessitated me returning to the store to fix my order. This is an impressive accomplishment. I have worked fast food, so I know that while mistakes are made, they are not as common as people feel, and most of the time they are the results of inattention or rushes. Yet, your fine employees have managed to bungle my orders at all times of the day, in any number of variations, no matter how busy or not they may be.

Adding to their style is the ridiculously slow speed with which they manage to bungle my orders. You would think that a restaurant so dedicated to such blunders would at least do so quickly, to have the pretext of being in a rush to keep the customers happy. However, this Krystal manages to take an eternity for even the simplest orders, rendering me not only late for whatever I was doing, but doubly late because I now have to go and get my order corrected.

You are thinking to yourself, "Surely this must be because your order is so complicated. Surely no restaurant could mangle orders so constantly unless they were complicated." But no. This Krystal manages to even make a mockery of a request for plain burgers. That's right. To get these orders right, all they have to do is to do nothing. And they still get it wrong. What commitment to their goal!

But to focus on their inability to follow simple directions is to sell the staff of this fine establishment far short. How could we not discuss their rude natures, their incivility, their lack of sympathy? On precisely no occasions that I have had to drive back from my house to correct my orders has anyone apologized, offered me a discount, or even asked if I wanted my drinks filled. Instead, I am greeted with withering stares and disdain, as if I am imposing by requesting that the food I paid for be correct. Especially with gas prices rapidly climbing, most people would succumb to regret or contrition, knowing that they have effectively raised the price of my meal by a decent percentage by making me waste gas. And yet your sterling staff crushes these human weaknesses, ignoring me for as long as possible before begrudgingly giving me what I asked for in the first place.

There are so, so many more issues I could discuss about this store. Could I discuss the time that they only had two employees at the store, but told no one, so the drive thru backed into the street, and people who walked in were greeted by a cook who politely inquired, "What do you want?" while rolling eyes? Or when a manager yelled obscenities at employees while coming in through the front door? Or their mysterious tendency to never have receipt paper, meaning that we have no way of confirming orders or what we paid?

But here is the most simple way to illustrate the impact this store has had on me: they have made me feel as though it is my job to check my order before I leave the store. Imagine being so successful at your incompetence that you have successfully made your customers feel that they are to blame for your mistakes, and that they bear the responsibility of making sure they get what they are asking for.

In the end, I am unsure if your restaurant is a massively successful performance art installation designed to prove how truly miserable a fast food experience could be. If so, bravo, good sirs. If not, then I can only applaud your employees and staff at their incredible incompetence, inhumanity, and miraculous consistency of ineptitude. Clearly they are wasted here; they should have themselves positions in the federal government. I think would fit in perfectly with the good people at FEMA, no doubt.

In conclusion, I find myself wondering tonight why I continue to frequent this Krystal. Yes, I love the food. Yes, it is close to my house. But with such incredible incompetence on display, you would think that I would have learned to stay away. Maybe I finally am.

Sincerely,

Josh

Now, that was on May 18th. I got nothing as a result of this letter. Not an acknowledgment, not even an automated "We thank you for writing to us" letter. I don't really want anything back; all I would like is some sort of comment that a) they listen to compaints and b) would like to apologize for how I was treated.

But nothing.

Now, this past Sunday, my wife ended up stopping at Krystal to pick me up some dinner. The resulting drive-thru trip took 30 minutes, over which period of time...well, here's the next letter I wrote.

To whom it may concern:

I have complained about the Donelson branch of Krystal twice in the past, and been ignored. I would have thought that a long, detailed letter expressing irritation at your restaurant would have been responded to, but apparently not. Perhaps it's because my letter was long. Here's a simple version of tonight's events for your apparently simple minds.

1. When we tried to order dinner, we were told that the restaurant had run out of fries. Then it turned out that they hadn't really - he just hadn't checked.

2. AFTER ordering, AFTER paying, my wife was told that it would take 7-9 minutes to get food. She was thus stuck in her car with a fussy child for ten minutes, rather than getting the quick dinner we were hoping for. And ten minutes for Krystals? RIDICULOUS.

3. Finally, they brought the Krystals, but told my wife that their heat lamp has broken. Did I still want cold fries?

4. We asked for our money back. SO THEY TOOK THE FOOD BACK WITH THEM.

5. There was no apology, no explanation.

6. It took FIFTEEN minutes to process a refund.

7. The manager chose to YELL at my wife for being interested in what was taking so long for the refund. His exact words were, "Bear with me. I'm working on it."

8. He STILL did not apologize.

9. We were there for THIRTY minutes. We received no apology whatsoever.

10. We gave up on getting our money back. We finally got our food again and left. But, they lost the receipt and had to find it.

To give the devil his due, there was a single employee who was kind and understanding to my wife during all of this. Although he did not apologize, he did give my wife a pack of cookies, telling her, "Give this to the little one for having to wait."

This is inexcusable, offensive, and disrespectful. This has managed to do what no amount of health talk or bad experience has done before - I will not return to a Krystal restaurant again until I have received either an apology, an explanation, or I have been assured that your entire moronic, pathetic staff at this restaurant has been replaced by someone more intelligent and sympathetic, like a dog or a cardboard box. I have eaten Krystal since I was a young boy, and I will miss it and the considerable amount of business I have done there, but I am sick of being treated with disrespect, disdain, and contempt by your corporation.

This time, I sent it through the complaint form, the question form, the suggestion form, AND the compliment form, just in the hopes of being read.

Nothing.

Look - I don't want much. All I want is an apology, someone to say "Hey, maybe we shouldn't treat our customers this way." But I have gotten nothing, and I would have thought that my wife being YELLED AT by the manager might have merited such. But no.

It just seems to me that it's disingenuous to have a complaint and feedback form if you're going to ignore it.

Do I have a valid issue? Or do I need to just let it go?

Josh is clearly passionate about his concerns, and while he invested more time pursuing his complaint than we would recommend, it's not unreasonable for him to expect some response.

C'mon Krystal, showing up is half the battle. Take a minute and crank out a form letter.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears are all contesting the FCC's recent fines against them for not properly following analog transition rules in their stores, reports Ars Technica. Last week, Best Buy submitted a 41-page response (PDF) that claimed among other things that the FCC has no authority to fine them.

Best Buy's boldest claim is that the FCC "has not claimed any express authorization from Congress to enact the Labeling Rule, and none exist." In other words, they claim the FCC doesn't have the authority to force retailers to label all analog TVs with warnings that they will need a digital converter after to receive over-the-air broadcasts after February 17th, 2009.

Additionally, the company claims that its violations were accidents and not "willful" as described by the FCC, and that the FCC's report contained errors, such as listing a model that doesn't exist.

"Best Buy: FCC has no power to fine us over analog TVs" [Ars Technica] (Thanks to forgottenpassword!)

RELATED
"Sears, Best Buy, Wal-Mart And Others Fined For Not Warning Consumers About Analog Obsolescence"
Best Buy's Response [Ars Technica]
(Photo: Getty Images)

From the press release:

Today, SKYY® Vodka, the number-one vodka produced in the United States, spoke out against suggestions by Absolut® Vodka to disregard [the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,] as well as the joining of Texas to the Union in 1845, as depicted in Absolut's recent advertising.

"Like SKYY Vodka, the residents of states like California, Texas and Arizona are exceptionally proud of the fact that they are from the United States of America," said Dave Karraker, SKYY Vodka. "To imply that they might be interested in changing their mailing addresses, as our competitor seems to be suggesting in their advertising, is a bit presumptuous."

We're not going to link to Skyy's full press release and further promote their PR drivel. We already feel plenty dirty having stood in the center of their messy PR circle jerk.

(Photo: just_a_name_thingie)
PREVIOUSLY: Is This Absolut Ad Cheeky Or Distasteful?
Absolut Pulls Controversial Advertisement

"Taking it seriously" is a phrase companies use over and over again in public statements whenever they have bad PR. Our series of posts on occurrences of the phrase is our attempt to question how seriously companies are really taking these matters if every time they trot out this phrase by rote.
(Photo: jblyberg)

"They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance," he told El Reg by email.

He told us that Creative contacted him on a chat session. "They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something," he wrote. "It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go."

He acknowledges that Creative has a case regarding intellectual property, but is furious about the company's strategy. "I'd say they are stealing [from] their own customers by disabling features based on technologies they own (so they did it on purpose) and by charging for a software that requires an improved driver that they refuse to provide."

"At least they are getting flamed all over the web and they are certainly mad about it. That is enough reward for my hard work," he wrote.

Creative climbs down over home brew Vista drivers [The Register]
(Photo: Young Frankenstein)
PREVIOUSLY: Creative Sparks Customer Revolt When It Tries To Silence Third-Party Programmer

I think readers on Consumerist might find this interesting... with all the emails being sent to executives these days, are they becoming deaf to it? It appears at Dell that might be the case.

A comparison:

Four years ago, I wrote to Kevin Rollins, the then CEO of Dell, about a prolonged problem with a monitor. I received a very quick and friendly reply from Mr. Rollins, which was copied to two other executives. One being Ro Parra and the other I can't recall. The issue was SOLVED, sincere apologies were made, and I was thanked for letting them know about the problems.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a top-level executive at Dell about a problem with the same product. I received no reply from the executive, but got handed off to something called the customer resolutions center. The representative was curt, unhelpful and misinformed about technology and just about everything else. She even gave me the infamous "I have no supervisor" reply when I asked for hers. When I did speak to her supervisor, he was very professional, but since then has never returned one of my calls.

Apparently, at Dell writing to executives no longer has quite the punch.

Don't get me wrong—I don't think executives are required to write back to every customer that emails them. But the message I got from Dell four years ago was crystal clear: customers first. The message I got three weeks ago was... don't write us, we'll write you?

I think I'll stick with companies that welcome hearing directly from customers.

Seth

"I will investigate this issue and get back to you as soon as I get the facts. Since its Friday it will probably be early next week [hopefully Monday].

I will tell you that Don Pitts is no longer with Gibson and has not been with us for some time.

I have no personal knowledge about this issue and I personally approve all promotions for the company. We have a formal system where any agent of Gibson needs to present a promotion, its benefits and its cost. This then needs to be approved by a least two people before it comes to my desk. We do take these commitments seriously, and we have very strict internal processes to insure we deliver on our promises.

Regardless, I will get to the bottom of this and we will get you what was legitimately promised.

I do not know who you talked to other than attempting to contact Don, but we do have people on the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week to solve any Gibson related issue [1-800-4-GIBSON]. While they do not have the authority to send you $10,000 worth of gear on the spot they are literally less than a minute from my office and should/could have resolved this in a very short period of time. If you had an unsatisfactory conversation with anyone else at Gibson, let me know so we can insure that this will not happen in the future.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to address this problem."

Henry E. Juszkiewicz
Chief Executive Officer
Gibson Guitar Corp.
309 Plus Park

(Thanks to Mosten!)

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"Gibson Screws Musician Out Of $10,000 Worth Of Equipment"
(Photo: Getty)

My name is Marianne Maestas and I am with the Executive Customer Relations department of T-Mobile. I am contacting you on behalf of Mr. Robert Dotson in regards to the email that you sent him yesterday evening.

In your email, you express concerns, as you are not able to use your service for Twitter. As you have been advised, Twitter is not an authorized third-party service provider, and therefore you are not able to utilize service from this provide any longer. You indicate your feeling that this is a violation of the Net Neutrality.

T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate "... some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion." Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation.

The arguments are relevant to the issue at hand, because text messaging is not the Internet. Until your communication hits the TPC/IP layer, it's subject to all the corporate crap that phone messages are. The phone companies are more balkanized than you realize, clearly. Specifically, phone service providers are allowed to block any short code they want. Read the policies for using a short code to provide service.
http://www.usshortcodes.com/csc_obtainPol.html
T-Mobile already has the contractual right to pick and choose which short codes it supports.

"Net Neutrality outrage: reports of T-Mobile blocking Twitter" [ZDNet]
"Twitter, Tweeters, And T-Mobile: Everyone Loses" [Silicon Alley Insider]
"T-Mobile Attacks Net Neutrality Unnecessarily: Twitter Problem Not Its Fault" [Wired]

The government placed part of the blame for the lead paint recall on Mattel and RC2, suggesting that they should have exercised more oversight.

"To prevent loopholes in quality control, overseas brand owners should improve their product design and supervision over product quality," the watchdog agency said.

China bans exports by 2 toy makers [LA Times]
(Photo: Violator3)