Another Overreaction: Woman Drives Through T-Mobile Store Because iPhone Cracked

Screen shot of a woman driving into and through at
T-Mobile store in Florida because they wouldn't give
her a replacement phone. 

It seems like every time I turn around, somebody is upset with a retailer or other service provider and just totally overreacts.

I mean, big time.

The latest, as you'll see in the video at the bottom of this post, involves a woman in Florida (it's always Florida, isn't it?) who got a new iPhone but its display was cracked.

She went to a T-Mobile store in Palm Springs, Florida seeking to get it replaced, but she said the store wouldn't do it, even though she had insurance.

Now, most people who are dissatisfied with a retailer do things like never shop there again, tell their friends about the lousy experience, or maybe write a nasty Yelp review.

But this woman, Shinobia Montoria Wright, 26,  took it a BIG step forward. She returned to the store, drove her SUV through the front window and into the showroom and started smashing glass display cases with a squeegee, said police, according to the Palm Beach Post. 

She still doesn't have a new phone at last report, but she now DOES has a variety of criminal  charges, including aggravated battery, battery, burglary, criminal mischief, and of course, reckless driving.

Wright hasn't been arraigned yet because she's still hospitalized for arm injuries from the incident. Plus - Surprise! - she is undergoing a mental health evaluation.

Two employees at the store had minor injuries. The store suffered $30,000 in damage and was declared temporarily unsafe by Palm Beach County officials.

The Palm Beach Post said Wright told police that she did all this because of the phone and because she was having a "bad day."

Next time she has a bad day, she ought to just climb back into bed. It's safer that way.

Here's the video:

Turns Out There Are LOTS Of Rude Name Changers At Comcast

Consumerist said last year Comcast was the nation's worst
company. Not sure what this year will bring.  

Lots of people kind of chuckled and shook their heads last week when a Comcast customer reported that somebody there changed her first name on her account to "Asshole."

It took practically an act of Congress to get this fixed, and it finally did get fixed after the person, who apparently really isn't an asshole, went to the press.

Despite Comcast's poor customer service record, that had to be one rogue employee just being a troll, right?

Well, maybe not. Consumerist reports that a number of other people have come forward with news that Comcast has changed the names their parents gave them and dubbed them things like "dummy" and "whore."

Journalist and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott has been all over this, and has found quite a few examples of Comcast calling its customers mean names.

Way back in 2005, Comcast called one woman a "bitch dog" on her bill. And in the several days after Elliot disclosed that recent customer was called an "asshole," other people who have had dealings with Comcast have come forward.

In December, someone at Comcast changed the first nae of Julie Swano to "Whore."

She said she talked to many so-called customer service reps on a variety of issues for the next month. She wondered why all those people saw that "whore" name and didn't change it until she confronted Comcast with the name problem on January 6.

Another Comcast customer, Carolina Heredia, said the cable provider changed her name to "Dummy" in her online account, Elliott says. 

Heredia said Comcast offered no apologies ore explanation as to why her name was changed like that.

Just today, Consumerist reported another Comcast customer came forward, saying the company changed her name to "Super Bitch."

The name changing can't be by one rogue employee, there had to be several.

I don't know whether any of the customers involved were actually pains in the neck or just normal people trying to get a problem resolved.  Employees at all businesses mumble under their breath about customers they believe are frustrating.

But changing their names to insults on billing records and requiring an act of Congress to change the names back to normal?

What, these Comcast workers never got past middle school?

As is always the case with these public relations disasters, a spokesman for Comcast, this time Tom Karinshake a senior vice president for Comcast customer service, apologized and said systems would be put in place to prevent such things in the future.

"We're retraining our teams on the importance of making name changes properly," Karinshak said.

Good idea. But these insults and incredibly poor service to Comcast customers keep coming out of the woodwork. Remember that epic phone call when one customer wanted to end service.

The drama in that call went on forever

According to The Verge, which did a fairly exhaustive investigation on Comcast last summer, the cable giant doesn't have a lot of incentive for customer service, given their near-monopoly status in many communities. No competition, no incentive to do better.

Plus they shower campaign contributions on politicians.

The Verge had this to say:

"Comcast spends more than $2 billion a year on customer service, a painfully large number for a publicly tradec company eager to maximize shareholder returns. That is perhaps why Comcast pushes its employees in customer service and tech support to make sales  - a skewed incentive when customers are calling in with a problem.

The company also overbooks technicians, leading to late and missed appointments, an relies heavily on contract labor, where quality control can be difficult."

OK, pro-business types, your turn. If the free market is the way to go, and competition makes things better for everybody, why do all these so-called pro-business, free market types let outfits like Comcast be such an monopoly?

Why do they support its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable to make an even bigger monopoly, and why do they oppose local government efforts' to create their own little public utility broadband and cable services?

If anybody's got some good answers, I'll post 'em.

A Love Story: Phone Company Deletes Cherished Voicemail, But Technicians Get It Back.

Stan Beaton reacts when hearing his late wife's voice again.
A voice mail recording she made before her death was
deleted, but technicians eventually recovered it.  

Stan Beaton's wife died in 2003.

It comforted him a little that he kept his wife's voice on the home voice mail.

But recently, technical work by his telecom firm, Virgin Media, deleted the voice mail, and it was thought that it was permanetly deleted.

Beaton, 68, of Mirfield, West Yorkshire, England, was devastated by the loss of that snippet of his wife's voice, the BBC reports. He was initially told the voice was "lost forever."

"I've always resisted changing companies because whenever I mentioned that my wife's voice was our voicemail message and would it be retained and each company said no, so that's why I never changed.

Sadly, it disappeared. I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry......I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me."

But technicians at Virgin Media began to poke and prod and do all that alchemy with computer systems that tech geeks do, and got the voice mail with Beaton's wife back.

Given how a lot of big telecom companies aren't exactly awesome at customer service these days, you have to appreciate Virgin Media's efforts.  After all, the chances of getting that voice mail back were slim.

Here's what Rob Evans, executive director of engineering at Virgin Media said:

"It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, however, a team of 11 engineers spent three days tracking it down."

Here's a nice video of Beaton with the newly recovered voice mail message. What his late wife says is as mundane as possible, but given the importance to Beaton, also incredibly profound.


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Torturing Airline Passengers is Seasonal Tradition

A lot of us are taking planes to see the family this holiday season, my husband included, so that means it's time for the national game to begin: Torturing airline passengers!

It started early this year with this news. About a week ago, Delta Airlines employees thought the perfect target for a holiday torture would be to focus on a Marine that had been badly wounded and disabled in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post.

Delta Airlines is accused of mistreating
a disabled Marine in a wheelchair

Lance Cpl. Christian Brown is a double amputee, and Delta employees thought such a person belonged in back of the plane, and clumsily bumped and pushed and jarred his wheelchair down the narrow plane aisle in full view of everybody.

There were plenty of chances to give him a far more dignified ride. Several passengers in First Class in the front of the plane offered to give up their seats for Brown, but the employees refused, saying the plane had to take off immediately.

Turns out the plane was actually running early. And besides, how long would it take for somebody in First Class to move to Coach and give Brown the seat?

The Washington Post quoted retired Army Lt. Col. Keith Gafford, who witnessed the incident thusly:

“I have been flying with Delta for a gazillion years and this crew treated Chris worse than you’d treat any thing, not even any body. I did 27 years in the military. I have seen a lot of things and have seen a lot of guys die, but I have never seen a Marine cry,” said Gafford, who served two tours in Iraq. “What the kid said was, ‘I have given everything that I can give and this is the way I am being treated? This is how I will be treated for the rest of my life?’” 

A Delta spokesperson gave the usual corporate apology, and said the company would take the additional necessary next steps, but didn't say what those steps are. Firing? Retraining? Or is Delta just going to let the whole thing blow over?

Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration thought it would be fun to harass a wheelchair bound, sick 12 year old girl at a Dallas airport, according to television station KDFW, Fox 4 in Dallas.

Apparently, the TSA agents detected what was believed to be bomb residue on the girl's hand and/or wheelchair. False positives happen sometimes, so OK, so far, not so bad.

TSA is also accused of abusing somebody
in a wheelchair, this time a 12 year old girl

But in this case, they kept the girl out in the public eye, not letting her mother near her, and not explaining what was going on. This lasted for nearly an hour, during which the girl was clearly upset, and occasionally cried.  They finally let her go without an apology.

How about a little compassion until or unless it was proven the kid was some nasty little terrorist, or something?  And maybe investigate the situation out of the view of all those passersby?

Yes, I know the TSA has a tough job and yes, I know we all want them to stop anybody from making terrorist mischief on our planes, and yes, some people are going to be subject to false alarms. Deal with it. But do you really have to be this insensitive?

TSA, in response to the publicity, like Delta, sent out the usual bland statement:

"TSAs mission is to safely, efficiently and respectfully screen nearly two million passengers each day at airports nationwide. We are sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screen experience and we invite those individuals to provide feedback to TSA through a variety of channels." 

Which leads me to my big point here. It' is INFURIATING that every time some company or some agency gets called on the carpet with some real or alleged misdeed, they resort to these same bland statements, that was probably written by one guy 20 years ago and just recycled by everybody.

These bland PR statements arguably anger people more than the original problem, because they don't address specifics, and don't say what will be done to fix the problem. The message in these statements. "Go away and quit bothering us. We'll do what we damn well please."

And notice how the TSA statement implicit blames the girl and her mother for the PR mess. They wanted them to provide feedback in their channels. So that unpleasant publicity not happen and the TSA can just bury the problem without doing anything.

More people ought to stand up and make a public stink if treated horribly. That doesn't mean complaining at every slight, or going into hystrionics. But really. let's hold people and companies just a tiny bit accountable, shall we?

"Fat Girls" at Restaurant Understandably Outraged, Eatery Mortified

Way back when, I used to be a waiter. I'd have to keep track of receipts so I'd write something on them that described what the customer looked like, so I can get the right check to the right person.

I was smart enough to take pains to be as neutral as possible, so there'd be no chance the customer could see something to annoy them. Usually that would involve figuring out their first name, and using that.

The offending check at a California restaurant

If the names were unavailable, I'd say, "Woman with black sweater," or "man with blue tie"

Other people aren't that smart, apparently. At a restaurant called Chilly D's Sports Lounge in the Cameo Club Casino, in Stockton, Calif.,  an employee named Jeff wrote down on the check "Fat Girls" to describe the customers.

The so-called Fat Girls got the check, with the "Fat Girls" listed on it, and they, quite reasonably are outraged by the check.

A manager with a :"smirk" offered them a 25 percent discount, then a 50 percent discount, say the customers, but that didn't placate them.

Jeff has apparently been been fired. But now more than ever, a rogue employee like Jeff can really screw up the reputation of a business.

It's scary. It used to be in the dinosaur era before Twitter that the customers would have told a few of their friends about the bad experience and the restaurant would have lost a few sales.

Now this whole thing has gone viral, and the owners of the business are mortified. It sounds like they're sincere and are really feel horrible that the customers were treated this way. The put out the following message on Facebook:

"We are just as appalled at what happened to these ladies and this employee has been immediately terminated. We are a family run business and...

strive to make our customers feel welcomed and appreciated.

 My family is embarrassed and we are holding a full staff meeting to re-train all of our remaining employees so that this never happens again. In no manner do we want to be associated with this type of behavior and it is devastating that one persons behavior has reflected on our family's establishment.

 My hope is, that we can rectify the situation by taking immediate action with this employee and by extending our most sincere apologies to these ladies and anyone that has been affected by this situation. I completely understand why they were hurt by what was written on their receipt and that type of treatment isn't tolerated."

Of course, the owners can't win. The Facebook apology prompted a big flame war among people debating, rudely, whether more people should have been fired, whether the owners were sincere, whether the women deserved to be called fat. (Really!!) and on and on.

I don't know if any publicity is good publicity, but I'm sure the people who operate this restaurant just want this nightmare to be over.