Isn’t that note from the Republic of Tea just swell? Oh, sure, it’s probably not really written in a florid hand with a fountain pen. Doubtlessly it was just rattled off with a blue cursive font. But hey, aesthetics count. And it certainly helped win Eugene D. over:
tips
Monday Readers Round-Up
By 10.16.06
Every time Ben lugs his bronzed body into a television studio, we get indundated with hundreds of emails within minutes… an armada of people up late in the middle of the night, writing in as one, to tell us about their mistreatment.
How Much To Tip All Those Grubby Bellhops
By 10.16.06
There is a large number of petulant, pouting employees ready to freeze you with an icy shoulder if you don’t pony up a tip. It can be hard trying to figure out just whom social etiquette dictates you tip and whom can safely be ignored.
Monday Morning Readers Round-Up
By 10.2.06
The Monday Morning Reader Round-Up is a great way for me to both nurse a hangover and help me make my Monday post quota. It’s the standard spiel: our biggest stories come from the anecdotes of our readers. We want you to send us your complaints, your links, your commendations, because this site is written by you more than it is by me and Ben. Then I give you the email address to write to: tips@consumerist.com. And then I round-up last week’s readers stories.
Tip: Cancel Your Account To Get A Human
By 9.28.06
Courtesy of Bart, comes some excellent advice when trying to reach a human to resolve your problem: just threaten to cancel. They’ll be happy to resolve your complaints then!
Monday Morning Readers Round-Up
By 9.25.06
I mentioned it a bit earlier today, but companies are starting to read this blog. Last week, complaints about T-Mobile, Coinstar and Cingular led to direct intervention from the companies.
Waiters Lobby for 20% Mandatory Tips
By 9.18.06
Anyone who’s ever waited tables knows the agony of the crappy tip. But should diners be forced to pay mandatory 20% tips?
Monday Morning Reader Round-Up
By 9.18.06
While the steaming chunks of what was once Ben’s body now clog the toilet of a Bronx men’s room stall, it’s still business as usual here at The Consumerist.
Get A Human With Bringo. Maybe.
By 9.7.06
Good old Adam Pash over at Lifehacker wanted to make sure everyone here knew about Bringo, a service that calls customer service for you, automatically navigates the phone tree and then calls you back when they’ve got a human on the line.
Monday Morning Reader Round-Up
By 8.14.06
It’s likely to be a slower paced week here at the Consumerist. We’ll still be posting, but it won’t be quite to the volume you’ve come to expect. Ben is taking the next couple days off to lounge about inflating his beer belly in the Hamptons, and working half-days the rest of the week. I, on the other hand, will be spending much of the week in the Netherlands, exchanging kusjes with fly honey-haired Dutch girls.
UPDATE: Actually, Don’t Buy Tickets At The Midnight Hour
By 8.10.06
Yesterday, we claimed that sitting around bleary-eyed until midnight would net you the best airline ticket prices. Upgrade Travel read it; they snickered contemptuously, sending guffaws of elite contempt in our direction. Then, Mortal Kombat style, they ripped the dripping spine out of our hopes and dreams of cheap nocturnal airfares:
Let’s Hear Some Juicy HMO and Insurance Stories
By 8.9.06
And that’s about all we have to say. This post could end right here. But we want to expand our editorial horizons and that means whipping you into giving up the ghost we parasitically digest and regurgitate in the form of helpful and entertaining information.
Monday Morning Reader Round-Up
By 7.31.06
It’s Monday Morning. A fresh week of consumerist complaint awaits us! With approximately one million, seven hundred thousand customer service calls fielded per day (source: our ass), even if an optimistic 0.01% of those calls is fielded by a cretinous sack, that is a yield of over 17,000 unsatisfactory customer service interactions. Slimy bottom feeders that we are, we want to hear about them!
Executive Customer Support: Finding The Number
By 7.26.06
So, you want to obtain executive level customer support but can’t find their phone number. That’s understandable, most companies don’t want you to. But access to the corporate switchboard can be yours with a little sleuthing.
Reminder: Anyone Can Be A Commenter
Just a friendly reminder: every reader can and should become a Consumerist commenter. The bar to entry is just insanely low: have a somewhat sane point, don’t type in all capital letters, and follow the process below…