Comcast is not exactly renowned for its high-quality customer service. It consistently ranks as one of the most-hated, most ineffective companies in the country, in both formal and informal surveys. They hired an exec just to change the customer experience, but the heap of public, embarrassing incidents for them just keeps getting bigger. So if you’re a Comcast customer, and you’re stuck in a loop trying to get your problem solved, is there anything you can actually do? [More]
eecb
Hertz Tells Me It Has No Idea How To Read A Fuel Gauge
By 5.13.13
Anyone who has returned a rental car with less fuel than agreed to knows full well that rental company employees understand how to read a fuel gauge, because there is money to be made if you’re coming back light on gas. But one Consumerist reader says it’s a different story when you prepay for fuel and you’re the one looking to be reimbursed. [More]
Using The EECB Gets Me A SimCity Refund, But What About Everyone Else?
By 3.12.13 — Updated: 3.13.13
Consumerist reader Kevin was one of many SimCity gamers ticked off last week (likely plenty are still fuming this week), but unlike many of his fellow players, he was able to procure a refund for the deluxe digital edition. What in the what? “But EA doesn’t seem to be giving out refunds!” you might’ve just yelled at the screen. Kevin attributes his success to the executive email carpet bomb, or the EECB. [More]
Customer Pens Break-Up Letter To Frontier Communications CEO, Gets Positive Response
By 2.22.13
We’ve written before about the perils of authoring angry, profane rants at the companies that do nothing but disappoint. But we didn’t really say anything about tongue-in-cheek, purple prose that treats one’s relationship with his DSL provider like it’s a Harlequin romance novel (minus the steamy parts). [More]
Verizon FiOS Misplaces My Set-Top Box For 7 Weeks, Expects Me To Pay $350
By 2.12.13 — Updated: 2.13.13
When your cable provider makes a mistake and you can clearly show that this is the case, you’d expect that it would have the decency to not penalize you for its error. But that’s apparently not the case at Verizon, which expects Consumerist reader Steven to fork over $350 and hope he gets it back. [More]
Sprint Authorized Retailer Promises No Activation Fees, Guess What Happens Next
By 1.3.13
Tom had a problem with Sprint: an authorized retailer had broken a promise and/or set up his phone upgrade incorrectly. He set out to remedy it by deploying an exquisitely crafted executive e-mail carpet bomb. Now, when you deploy an EECB, we recommend that you provide relevant details, but also that you open with a short executive summary so that the busy people you’re emailing (or their busy underlings) can get a quick idea of what you’re complaining about, and route it to the correct person instead of immediately trashing your missive.
If you spend a lot of time online, think of an executive summary as a “tl;dr” summary that you put first, instead of at the end. Combine that with a clear letter and spelling out his (quite reasonable) expectations, and it’s no wonder that Sprint whipped a response and a resolution to him within the hour. [More]
EECB To Lids Finally Gets Me Out Of Dead-End Customer Service Maze
By 12.26.12
You buy something online and the wrong item shows up. You try to exchange it in the store but the item you ordered is out of stock there. You call other stores and customer service, only to be made a worse offer than what you’d paid for weeks earlier. [More]
Verizon Sends Me To Collections Over Fees It Shouldn’t Have Charged Me In The First Place
By 11.12.12
After several months of being lied to by Verizon customer service about his bill, it looks like a customer finally got the company to realize its error and zero out his account — except for the $17.50 in fees that shouldn’t have been assessed in the first place, and which has the customer fending off a collections agency. [More]
The Dos And Don’ts Of Getting Someone To Take Your Complaint Seriously
By 11.2.12
While there are no guaranteed ways to convince a customer service rep that your complaint has merit, there are certain things that can only help you make your case — and others that will only submarine your efforts. [More]
How Can My iPhone Have Liquid Damage If The Sensor Wasn’t Tripped?
By 10.29.12
Last week, we posted the story of Justin, who was able to make his case to Verizon that he had not dunked his phone in water, and was entitled to a warranty replacement. Jeff found this story intriguing, beacuse he was facing a similar problem. When he sent his iPhone to Verizon, he was told that he wasn’t receiving text message alerts because of liquid damage to the phone. Which is odd, since the employees of his local Verizon store didn’t notice any liquid damage, the liquid contact sensors weren’t flipped, and he didn’t remember getting his phone wet. [More]
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A Guide To Figuring Out Executives’ E-Mail Addresses
By 10.24.12
So you’ve exhausted all the standard customer service and complaint-resolution routes and decided it’s time to unleash your issue via an Executive E-mail Carpet Bomb. Only problem is, you can’t find any contact info for these executives. What to do? [More]
Samsung Shares E-Mail Address For Reaching Executive Customer Service
By 9.13.12
It seems like just 22 hours ago that Samsung USA was asking Consumerist to redact its CEO’s e-mail address from a reader’s comment. Since then, the electronics biggie has admitted that maybe that wasn’t such a great idea, and now the company has agreed to provide Consumerist readers with a new e-mail address that connects customers who have exhausted the usual customer service channels directly to Samsung’s executive customer service. [More]
How E-Mailing The Samsung CEO Helped Me Break Free Of Refurbished Replacements
By 9.10.12
Todd was having problems with his Samsung Galaxy phone, so he traded it in for a refurbished warranty replacement. The replacement phone turned out to be defective, too. Rather than enter the perpetual cycles of smartphone replacement purgatory, he knew there had to be another way. He looked for one, and found it in a recent post about a reader who deduced the e-mail address of Samsung’s CEO and used that information to get the company to actually honor its warranty. [More]
Water Company Wants Me To Pay $30 To Activate Service I Already Have
By 8.16.12
A few years back, after the death of her parents, Consumerist reader Jen took over the running of the house in which she’d grown up. Since then, she’s been paying the bills without problem. But now the water company wants her to pay $30 simply to change the name on the account. [More]
Best Buy Thinks A New AC Adapter Is A Suitable Replacement For Laptop Battery
By 2.9.12
Back in 2008, Courtney bought an Asus laptop at Best Buy and decided that plunking down $329.99 for Geek Squad Black Tie Protection would be a good investment in case something went wrong with the computer. That extended warranty included one free battery replacement so with the clock ticking until it expired, Courtney decided to take advantage of this benefit to replace the current not-so-great laptop battery. [More]
EECB To AT&T Succeeds Where Small Claims Court Fails
By 1.4.12
Consumerist reader Judy has three young daughters, all of whom have Samsung Impression phones, many of which have failed over the last year or so and needed to be replaced by AT&T. So when the holiday times rolled around, Judy wanted to upgrade her kids’ regular ol’, buggy cell phones with iPhone 4S smartphones. She’d hoped that AT&T would see the benefit in allowing her to upgrade early and get a head start on paying them more money. Alas, the Death Star did not see the wisdom in her way of thinking. [More]
E-Mail To Home Depot CEO Resolves Month-Old Problem In 12 Hours
By 12.16.11
Consumerist reader Jim was feeling a little frustrated with Home Depot. He’d ordered some parts online for his chainsaw, only to find that one of the two boxes was completely empty. This was just the beginning of a month of misleading assurances, conflicting instructions and overall dissatisfaction for Jim. That is, until he penned an e-mail to Home Depot’s CEO. [More]
