I never used to be a very confrontational person. In fact I think I would go out of my way to avoid it, walking in the metaphorical muddy gutter to skirt around an oncoming confrontation. I don’t know when this all changed, but at some point, after being walked on and taken advantage of enough times, I just don’t put up with shit anymore.

That said, I’ve just recently taken to standing up for myself against corporations. Corporations are very, very large (generally speaking), particularly the “international” variety. They’re usually pretty well-run but occasionally, as a consumer, you’ll get what’s known in business jargon as “the shaft.” When this happens, you can do one of two things: “sit there and take it,” or “bitch about it and get them to fix it.”

There are lots of ways for a corporation to shaft you; Simple and innocuous things like a food server at a chain screwing up your order (I have a hard time with that one still, because I did food service for five years — I guess I’m too nice there), to not having a rebate or mail-order honored. Within the past two years, I’ve had three separate occasions where I’ve gotten “the shaft,” complained about it, and gotten results — typically from their “customer service” (read: “customer wrangling”) department.

Defrauded by Don Pablo’s

Last year, for Mellukkah (the week-long holiday where we celebrate my wife’s Melishness), Satya, Melissa and I went down to Dayton, intending to go to Amar India (this awesome Indian restaurant down by the mall). It was Melissa’s favorite restaurant, and the location of where we had our first Valentine’s day together. Plus, Satya had never been there.

As luck would have it, it had been thunder-storming that day and the storm had knocked out the power for the entire commercial lot that the restaurant was part of. It was only about 6:00 or so, so we went over to a new bookstore that opened by the mall and waited. Melissa and I looked at some Bellydancing videos, some books, and some ethnic music CDs. We were there for a little over an hour or two, and Melissa was getting really hungry. I called Amar India again and they were still without power. We waited a little longer, then drove back over to the restaurant. No luck.

Disenchanted, we got back in the car and decided to drive back. Melissa was very sad that Mellukkah wasn’t going very well that day. We decided to eat at Don Pablo’s, which was up on Miller Lane in north Dayton. (For those of you who have ever been to Dayton, Miller Lane is that long strip of restaurants that is right there when you first get onto I-75 South from I-70. You would know it if you saw it.)

I had never eaten at Don Pablo’s before, but I like faux-mex and tex-mex food so I thought it sounded good. I think Melissa just really wanted a Margarita.

Over the next hour or so we ate. The conversation was good, the food was alright, but the service was really bad. We often had dry drink-glasses, Satya’s order was messed up, and our server rarely checked up on us. It was sub-par service.

We got the checks, I paid with my credit card and tipped 10%. Now, I normally tip 20%, give or take 1-2%. I’m pretty generous, especially if the server is good. I will only go down to 10% if the service is awful but they make an effort. At the time I write this, I have only ever given less than 10% once, and that was in a situation where the server was intentionally rude and ill-tempered towards us.

A week or two passed by, and I was going over our budget, reconciling our purchases with my own record. I do this every week or so, almost compulsively, so that I’m always in touch with how much money we have. It helps keep me from over-spending and it keeps me financially grounded in reality.

I looked at the online bank statement. For the line where it said “Don Pablo’s” the amount listed was $5 above what we had actually authorized. I immediately knew what happened: The server felt we didn’t give her enough for her “effort,” so she padded the tip in the computer, thinking we would never notice. I imagine I probably wasn’t the first time she’s done this. I’ve worked with people who have done that before. Truth is, most people DON’T notice.

But I was livid. There was some pride anger mixed in there – the “Fool me once” thing. I wasn’t going to be made a fool. This was a criminal act; She was STEALING from me. Whether or not she felt entitled to it was totally irrelevant. I found my receipt from that day, found the number for that specific restaurant and called them. I got a manager on the line and told them what happened. He flippantly responded that they don’t handle that in the store and that I would have to call corporate. He really didn’t seem to care that what his employee did was illegal. This enraged me even more.

I called the number he gave me, and I don’t remember what actually happened here, but I’m pretty sure the number didn’t work. It was some automated system and I couldn’t get a hold of the right people. I found Don Pablo’s corporate website, found the appropriate number I needed, and called it. I was greeted with a voice mailbox, but it was of a specific office, so I knew it would at least get heard by a person. After leaving my message, I hung up, wondering if anything would get done.

About a week went by before I heard anything back. Apparently the person’s office that I called was on vacation. It WAS July, after all. Finally she called back and I got to speak to a human about this. She was the Corporate Accounts manager, top-brass in the Don Pablo’s world. She authorized a refund for the amount and said she would speak with the restaurant directly about it.

A month or so later, we received a couple $10 gift certificates for Don Pablo’s. I think it was a “we have you on file as having put in a complaint, so we’re trying to woo you with free product” attempt. It felt somewhat insincere and a half-hearted attempt at appeasement. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I didn’t feel like the situation was truly resolved.

Melissa and I went back to Don Pablo’s and we used the gift certificates. The food was still just OK, but the service was a lot better. We tipped her 20%, as usual (on the original bill total, not on the adjusted-for-gift-certificate total).

In the end, and to this day, I still don’t feel they handled it very well. I really wasn’t so upset about the $5. It’s only $5. It was the principle of the whole thing. It doesn’t matter if it was $1 or $100; Someone was taking that which didn’t belong to them because they wrongly felt entitled to it. And that person’s manager, the person who is supposed to be the sane voice of reason amongst a bunch of irrational food-servers, didn’t really care. We haven’t been back there since.

Christmas with Airtran

This story begins with a little background. Airtran Airlines (based in Atlanta, GA) and Wendy’s (the international fast-food chain, founded by the late Dave Thomas) partnered up in 2005 with this scintillating offer: For every 8 Medium or Large drinks you purchase, you can mail them in for 1 Airtran credit. Airtran credits are typically acquired by making Airtran flights (a one-way flight = 1 Airtran credit), and can be traded in for amenities (“business class upgrades”) or free flights. It’s sort of like the “Frequent Flyer” programs of other airlines.

I did some calculations: It would take 8 credits to purchase a one-way flight. 8 drinks per credit comes out to 64 drinks altogether. If I wanted a round-trip flight, that would be 128 drinks. I got started right away. I started eating their more and getting drinks (obviously) at first. I got smart and started asking for an extra water or two in addition to my order. They gave them to me free for a while, then started charging me $0.25 apc thereafter. (Still not bad!) My friends, on my request, ate at Wendy’s and gave, or in some cases MAILED, me their cup-coupons.

By the time October or November rolled around, I had sent in 64 coupons already. One-way down! I sent in another volley of coupons a month later. I think my end credits were something like 13.0 credits altogether. Not quite enough to two one-ways / 1 round-trip, but enough for at LEAST one and maybe a business class upgrade or something. (Those take 4 credits)

Fast forward to 2006. The credits have been added, and in addition to the 10 pictured, I had 3 more. Melissa and I were living together, and we really had neither the time nor the money to really do any travelling, so the year was slowly creeping by. I was half-tempted to just give them to my friend Jon so he could fly home for next to nothing. But we decided to instead use them around Xmas time to fly home.

November comes. I call Airtran and speak with someone. They say I can’t use them for flights because all of the “available seats” that are purchasable via vouchers have been occupied. All that’s left is raw dates. What are my remaining options? Business-class upgrades. Free booze, more legroom, more comfortable seats. Ok, I’ll bite. I purchase the tickets (~$500 total) and inquire about the upgrades. She says I have to do it 48 hours before the flight. Ok, sounds good.

December. It’s December 14th or so. The middle of the month. I log on to Airtran to check their policies about pregnant women flying (Melissa was about 6 or 7 months pregs at this point). To my utter shock it says “Available Credits 0.0, Lifetime credits 23.0″.

“What??? Zero credits? WTF!” I was pissed. I immediately called Airtran’s 800 number and spoke with one of the customer-service grunts. You know, the people who are just there for the wage, have no real formal training in customer service, and handle the FAQ’s (frequently asked questions). She, in a very unenthusiastic “You’re just getting in my way between my punch-out time” deadpan, informs me that I had to use (redeem) my credits before Dec 10th for VOUCHERS, and I had to use (redeem) the VOUCHERS for the TICKETS two weeks prior to the flight (Dec 13th). She was sorry, but there’s nothing she can do about it.

At this point I was really, really pissed. I felt I had been screwed over by corporate technicalities. I had the credits. It was 3 days off. Where was the problem? I immediately logged onto Airtran’s website, found their contact email, and composed an email that more or less said this:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I’ve been a faithful customer of your company for over 2 years. I recommend you to other people, etc. etc. etc.

[ I then explain the situation, giving an overview of what happened, and the miscommunication that took place. I also mentioned that the business class upgrades were so that my pregnant wife, who had never flown before, would be a little more comfortable on her first flight. ]

I feel really cheated about this because I was still choosing your company in spite of so many factors that are inconveniencing us. We have to have a layover in Atlanta, the total trip time will be around 6 or 7 hours. etc. etc. etc.

I felt this was really poorly handled and I will never fly Airtran again.

Aaron

The actual email was a paragraph or two longer. It was bluntly honest, probably sounded more than a little upset, and didn’t make any demands. I just stated that I was very displeased with how the situation was handled.

Two days later, I receive an email from Airtran. They were writing to both apologize for what happened, and to let me know that they were giving us four business class upgrades, already applied to the flight we were on, and that the credits I did have (13.0, only enough to buy 3 upgrades) were donated to a charity. (The “make-a-wish” foundation, I think. Or something similar.)

I have to admit, when I received that email, I felt a lot better about it. They had corrected their mistake, and made good on it. The flight itself still turned out to be a major pain (8.5 hours altogether, with a 3 or 4 hour layover in Atlanta. We did a lot of reading and a lot of Sudoku), but I had my in flight Tanqueray & Tonics, and there was indeed more leg room. But they made good on it. They fixed the situation and, more importantly, they went the extra mile, so to speak. Kudos to their customer service.

The Tanqueray Highball Fiasco

I love me some Tanqueray. I’ve only been drinking alcohol since I was 24, but I jumped right into the hard stuff, and something about Tanqueray just appealed to me. It may have been the rich green color of the glass bottles contrasted with the red-wax seal. Or maybe it was the aroma, a mixture of pine needles and rubbing alcohol. Or maybe it was the snobbery of it. I don’t know. I later found out that my whole family on my mom’s side all drink Tanqueray & Tonics. Go figure. Maybe it’s just genetic.

For Xmas last year, my friend Jon H. got me the Tanqueray Gift Tin. It was a fifth (750mL) of Tanqueray in a really sweet shiny green tin container. While I find it entertaining that he buys me alcohol every Xmas, I appreciated it nonetheless. Tanqueray isn’t cheap.

What was really cool though, and I was really excited about this, was if I sent in this little postcard from inside the tin with a money order for $4.95, they would send me two sweet looking highball glasses with the word “Tanqueray”engraved onto each. Sweet! I was psyched. In late January, I acquired a postal money order, filled out the card, and mailed it all in.

The card said to expect 4-6 weeks for delivery. I never quite understood how, in this day of technology, it still takes 4-6 weeks for delivery. What exactly is going on in that time frame? Are they handcrafting the glasses from somewhere in Southern Africa and they have to be brought over by rowboat? I mean really. You receive the postcard, you pay someone $8.00 / hr to do the data entry to put it in a database, and then a fulfillment warehouse prints out a daily report of mailing labels from the same database and flags all those orders as “shipped.” Pretty simple. The logistics aren’t very difficult here, and there certainly shouldn’t be a lot of paperwork changing hands or anything.

Anyways, that’s neither here nor there.

I waited 4-6 weeks. Then I waited another 4 weeks. Still no glasses. I was getting a little miffed. The more I waited the more I wanted them. Around this time we had our son, Sullivan, and I forgot about them for a little while. After a month though, I was determined to find out what happened. So about 2 months ago (late May / early June), in between semesters, I emailed their customer service and inquired about the glasses. I mentioned the fact that I was a very devoted customer (I am), that my family all love Tanqueray (they do), and that I was really excited about getting the glasses (I was). They wrote back a day or two later, asking me for some more information. I replied with what they asked for, and then heard nothing back.

Figuring “Oh it’s probably on its way now. They just forgot to confirm the shipment to me. No biggie.” I waited 4-6 weeks. No highballs. Grr…

Yesterday, I wrote them an angry letter. I was already in a foul mood because the final project for one of my classes received an unfairly lower grade than anticipated (again). So I decided to channel some of that motivation into something productive, and I wrote Tanqueray Customer Service another letter. It read:

Hi,

I contacted this address a couple months ago about my Tanqueray Highball glasses that I still have yet to receive.

[Synopsis of what's happened so far]

I’ve been a devoted Tanqueray drinker (as is my entire family on my mom’s side. I think it’s the British blood in us) ever since I started consuming alcohol. But I really don’t appreciate the lack of customer service I’m experiencing here. Not receiving the glasses initially I understand, mistakes happen. But this should have been taken care of months ago when I first emailed you all. Believe me, I will have no problem telling EVERYONE I know about how horribly you have handled this. I’ve been very vocal about my love of Tanqueray up to now, but I will be twice as vocal about how pissed I am about this.

Regards,

Aaron

Today, I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Someone in the 204 area code. I occasionally get people looking for a “Malcolm,” but they’re usually locals. (I have no idea who this “Malcolm” character is, nor do I know why the same people keep calling a number that I’ve owned for nearly 4 years) On the other end of the phone was a younger woman, and she introduced herself as being from Tanqueray’s Customer Service department. “Yes!” I thought, “Finally, I get to talk to a professional.”

Customer service professionals are awesome. They understand the whole idea behind Customer Service. Happy customers tell a few people. Unhappy people tell many. I think the actual statistic is something like 6 happy reviews vs. 20 unhappy reviews. In the AirTran example above, the person on the phone was not a professional. The person who emailed me was. Big difference there. Customer Service professionals are also trained and are apparently given authorization to do whatever is reasonably necessary to correct the situation.

We spoke on the phone for about 10 minutes. She expressed her, and the corporation’s, apologies for not getting this right the first time. I was very courteous on the phone. Not only is she personally seeing to it that the highball glasses I initially ordered are being sent out, but she’s having a SECOND set sent to me, as both a thank you and to “make good” on the mistake. I told her that I understood that mistakes happen, but I was mostly upset because I felt like the company dropped the ball and never followed up after I brought up my initial request. She gave me a phone number and case number and said she would try to expedite it, but that I should receive it in…yes, you guessed it, 4-6 weeks.

---

Angry letters get things done. It’s always important to remain polite and professional, but at the same time be honest. If you’re upset, say so. Don’t be deceptive, or insincere. And certainly don’t ever send an angry letter to just try to get free stuff. If you really aren’t entitled to it, don’t act like you are.If you’ve ever been wronged by a corporation, or even a small mom & pop company, you should let them know what happened. If they don’t have a customer service department, shoot for contacting the highest level you can reasonably get in touch with.

 

One important thing to note is that before the Angry Letter gets written, you should always give the company a chance to just fix the problem easily. This means taking the broken product in, or calling the manager and asking for resolution of some kind. Take the simple route first. It requires less headaches, is faster, and is easier for everyone. If nothing gets done, or they pass the buck, THEN you write the Angry Letter.

Here are a few pointers:

• State who you are, what you purchased from the company (or what experience you had with them that’s offended you). “Hi, my name is Aaron, and I purchased a widget from your Springfield store last week. etc.”
• Politely say what went wrong. (the “polite” issue is important here. Just because it’s an “angry letter” doesn’t mean it should sound like it’s Joe Pesci writing it.) “The widget broke while still under warranty and the store wouldn’t replace it.”
• State what your expectations were and/or why you are upset. “The warranty clearly states that all widgets come with a replacement guarantee, but the Springfield store won’t honor it.”
• At this point, you either state that you are either abandoning their brand or are planning on telling everyone you know about it. Don’t make threats here. Threats are empty. Don’t mention the “L” word (“lawyer” or “legal”) unless you really do have a legal claim. (In which case just go directly to your lawyer and skip the letter). Just think to yourself “I’m very dissatisfied, what would I do if this company NEVER resolved the situation,” and spell it out. Just be sincere in whatever you say, and make good on your statement. “Your company has dishonored this warranty agreement, so I feel like my trust in your name has really been broken. I’m going to make sure to tell my friends what happened so they don’t have the same bad experience.”

Don’t be greedy. You’re not trying to get rich here, and you’re not entitled to more than what is necessary to put you where you should be if nothing was ever screwed up. If they replace the widget, and that’s all, just move on with your life. You don’t ever have to shop there again, and you can certainly tell your friends what happened. Besides, any company that values their customers (as they should) will go that extra mile and make sure that you’re not only taken care of, but happy as well.

My wife runs a SOHO business selling maternal products. Last month she mistakenly switched two addresses and sent two people the other’s item. She allowed them to keep what they received and in addition sent them what they initially ordered. They were both very happy and felt she resolved the issue well.

As a business owner, it may cost you a little extra initially to go the extra mile for your customers, but customers are the most important asset to any business.

[ If any of you readers have had similar experiences with companies, post comments about it, I'd be interested to hear your stories. ]

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