Be sure to read our Ultimate Consumerist Guide to Fighting Back, a go-to handbook for the dissatisfied consumer. Once you've decided to go the executive customer service right, be sure you read this first so you know what to say when you call the corporate avatar of your choice.

The Consumerist Executive Customer Service Index

ACS
Adelphia
Air Tran
Alamo
Alaska Airlines
Allegiant
Aloha
Amazon
America West
American Airlines
American Express
Amtrak
Apple
ATA
AT&T
AT&T Wireless
Bank of America
Barnes and Noble
Bell Canada
Best Buy
Blizzard
Blockbuster
Blogger
Bloomingdales
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
British Airways
Borders
Busey Bank
Buy.com
Cablevision
Charter Communications
Chase
Circuit City
Citibank
Comcast
Continental
cox
Delta
Direc-TV
Discover Card
Dish
Disney
Ebay
Enterprise
Equifax
Experian
Fedex
Frontier Airlines
Fry's
Gamefly
Geek Squad
Georgia Power
Helio
Home Depot
Humana
HSBC
IKEA
ING Direct
Insight
Keybank
Lenovo
Loew's
Macy's
Microsoft (and Xbox)
Midwest Airlines
Motorola
National City
Nicors
Northwest Airlines
Norton
Office Depot
Office Max
Orbitz
Paypal
Pitney Bowes
Qwest
RCN
Regions Bank
Register.com
Ryan Air
Samsung
Seagate
Sears
Sirius
Skybus
Sony Ericcson
Spirit Airlines
Sprint
Sports Authority
Staples
Symantec
T-mobile
Target
Time Warner Cable
TransUnion
Uhaul
United Airlines
United Health Care
UNUM Life Insurance
UPS
US Airways
US Cellular
Verizon landline/DSL/Fios
Verizon Wireless
Vonage
Wachovia
Walmart
Washington Mutual
Wells Fargo

In the event you can't find the info you are looking for here, you can scan our backlog of contact info, or use Google to uncover the addresses yourself. In the event you find something we don't have, feel free to share at tips@consumerist.com.

Researched by Alex Jarvis
Last updated: 11/07/2008

"Hello, my name is ________. I'm one of your customers, and I was hoping to speak to (CEO's name) because I'm really getting frustrated with getting a problem resolved, and I know that your company doesn't want me to feel that way."

Rob says this works because if they don't help you, they're backed into a corner of seeming like they actually do want you angry and frustrated. And despite what articles on this site might otherwise suggest, most people like to go bed at night feeling like they're good people. The rest of the article is a really great refresher course on how to win when calling executive customer service.

The Art of Turboing [Macwhiz]
(Photo: Getty)

Cingular
Stanley T. Sigman - President, Chief Executive Officer
3051 Bienville Blvd
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
1-866-220-8446 - President's Office

Sprint
Gary D. Forsee - President, CEO, Director
2001 Edmund Halley Drive
Reston, VA 20191
1-877-875-7505 - Executive switchboard

T-Mobile
Robert P. Dotson - President, CEO, and Director
12920 SE 38th St.
Bellevue, WA 98006
1-425-378-4000 - Corporate Switchboard

Verizon
Ivan G. Seidenberg - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
140 West St
New York, NY 10007
(212)-395-1000 - Corporate Switchboard

— BEN POPKEN

Urbanski Janikowski, Robin [WHQPR]" [redacted]@united.com>
to: tips@consumerist.com
date: Jan 10, 2007 5:37 PM
subject: please call united airlines

Hello -

You have listed Graham Atkinson's personal cell phone number on your web site. Can you please call me so I can have this corrected?

Thanks,

Robin Urbanski

847-[redacted]

We have removed Graham's phone number. Sorry, we thought it was his office number. We got it from an industry contact list posted online. Doesn't do any one much good to have hordes of customers leaving messages on his personal cellphone, although it did already help Mahesh (to some degree).

Can you imagine the scene in the Atkinson SUV?
"Goddamit, refund my tickets!"
"Who is it honey?"
"Nobody, honey. Just another irate customer trying to call the Executive Vice President and and Chief Customer Officer."
"What is with these people? The ignominy!"

— BEN POPKEN

Graham Atkinson
United Airlines Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer
Fax: 1-847-700-3451
Email: graham.atkinson@united.com

Remember:

• Read our tutorial on executive customer service.
• You're probably going to get passed off to a secretary or an answering machine. This is fine and good.
• State your problem clearly and succinctly.
• Don't be emotional, focus on what went wrong and how you want it fixed.
• Wait for the callback. It should arrive within 24 hours.
• Don't abuse this contact info or you'll kill the deal for everyone else.

— BEN POPKEN

This info is handy if you're trying to attain executive customer service. Like if you want your complaint letter read and handled by someone who graduated college.

This is not a way to become a penpals with these cellular CEOs. They will most likely never know you exist. Rather, this is a way to get in contact with these company's executive customer service teams. (If you don't know what that is, read this first).

Sexy contact info, inside!

For numbers that are corporate switchboards, simply and politely ask for the offices of Mr. So and so. Put on your best professionals business voice and you will go far.

Cingular
Stanley T. Sigman - President, Chief Executive Officer
3051 Bienville Blvd
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
1-866-220-8446 - President's Office

Verizon
Ivan G. Seidenberg - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
140 West St
New York, NY 10007
(212)-395-1000 - Corporate Switchboard

T-Mobile
Robert P. Dotson - President, CEO, and Director
12920 SE 38th St.
Bellevue, WASHINGTON 98006
1-425-378-4000 - Corporate Switchboard

Sprint
Gary D. Forsee - President, CEO, Director
2001 Edmund Halley Drive
Reston, VA 20191
1-877-875-7505 - Executive switchboard

Ivan G. Seidenberg
140 West St
New York, NY 10007
(212)-395-1000

Alternatively, if you're trying to turbo your customer service problem and you want to get executive customer service, this is the transom to toss your issue over.

Here's how to obtain the highest levels of Apple Executive Customer Service. These people are empowered to perform magic, like replacing your machine or free out-of-warranty repairs.

Use but do not abuse this knowledge, please.

1) Call Apple Corporate: 408-996-1010
2) Ask the operator for Gene (like denim) Teluse, VP of Customer Care. She is Apple's highest ranking customer service agent, and she reports directly to Steve Jobs.
3) Leave a nice message, include any Apple Case/Repair numbers you might have, or your machine's serial number, and a callback number.
4) Wait ~24 business hours for one of Ms. Teluse's minions to call.
5) Calmly explain your story, and what you want Apple to do.

Tipster Thirdgen adds that in general, Apple will not replace a machine unless it has been unsuccessfully fixed 3 or more times for the same issue, or several major repairs (i.e. a logic board, a screen, a top case as separate repairs).

These guys (and gals) are CR super-ninjas, so threats, yelling, cursing, and generally rude behavior has no effect on them.

• ConsumerAvenger (going in the comments as The Cultural Icon) reports that she did finally receive a NEW motorola RAZR, just as she asked for. "I'm still planning on turning over creation because of what I've been through but at least people can call me," she says.

• We wanted to know whatever happened with Andrew W and the creepy Comcast tech but he hasn't responded to our followup inquest. Don't leave us hanging!

• Dan says TWC has continued to be helpful and the next step is to get his roommate to give a description of the tech who showed up to his house unannounced. That's proving difficult because his roommate is never home, never answers his phone or responds to his messages, and is in general, a useless schmuck.

His turboed executive customer service call (which we helped him achieve, thank you very much), went from Terri (customer care advocate), to Barry Rosenblum (Executive Vice President, Operations, Northeast Region) to Tom Allen (V.P. of TWC security of NY and NJ).

Allen said he's opening a case on the situation. More than just looking at job numbers, he can cross reference assigned techs and territory and see if someone was out of place. Edelman say Allen gave him his personal line and "was really nice and helpful."

Adding, "I think at that level they realize the seriousness of it...the possible lawsuitiness."

Dan had to run off to a lunch meeting and promises more details later. While we wait for him to finish his pastrami, read our full IM convo inside.

When Edelman (pictured) heard about this, he raced home to find out if anything was stolen. Upon inspection, nothing seemed amiss, but the mystery remained. What was this guy doing there?

There's two possibilities we can think of:
1) A TWC tech has gone buckwild.
2) Someone in Park Slope is impersonating a TWC tech and casing people's joints.

To find out, Edelman began questioning Time Warner customer service. They were no help, so he started IMing us with advice for how to conduct his calls. We walk him through, live...

Follow along our exciting IM journey, inside!

Stay tuned for the next installment in this scintillating true customer service crime!

John Stewart expressed frustration over our publication of "partially incorrect" TWC contact phone numbers. Since both those posts occurred, he says he's had, "an increase of calls where people request I fix their bill and advise me of your article."

"Internal documentation I am not permitted to show non-employees by NDA specifically forbids us from providing billing credits," he says.

"At the very least, this article has made it harder for Level 3 agents to do their job, and harder for people to reach Level 3 agents because we spend all day redirecting billing inquiries to Customer Service. Level 3 as phone operator = Level 3 not troubleshooting legitimate issues. "

As far as inability to fix billing goes, well, that's his word against Mike's, but one thing's for certain...

Use the phone numbers and info we gave you for good, not stupidity. Don't turbo to Level 3 for a billing issue. Don't turbo to Level 3 unless you've already gone through Level 1 and 2 and they have refused to fix your TECHNICAL problem. Keyword: T-E-C-H-N-I-C-A-L.

Thank you and have a nice day.

• Check the website, thoroughly.
• Scan the product documentation, esp. the first pages and backs of manuals.
• Look up publicly held companies using their stock ticker on Google Finance.
• Find the company's corporate address on the website and use a reverse-phone directory.

Once you're there, what do you do? Check out this fine article, "The Art of Turboing." Scan down to How To Turbo and then steps 4 and on.

Bear in mind, these methods should only be used after the standard customer service routes have been exhausted. Otherwise, you'll waste several people's time and ruin it for the rest of us, like kids from Aurora, Colorado break dancing.

(Thanks to Chuck!)