I had an issue for 2 months with Verizon where they messed up my new phone deliveries by sending me the wrong ones and they didn't ship other merchandise I purchased at the same time. Their customer support was terribly unhelpful, even after repeated escalations. It was enough I nearly went to AT&T[0].
They first wanted to charge me re-stocking fees on an order they very clearly messed up (for the wrong phones delivered). Then they wanted me to pay for shipping on the correct devices, and they incorrectly billed me as well, and it took several escalations to get them to understand I didn't receive my other merchandise either, which they then told me I had to make another support request for. It was a whole mess.
I sent a tweet (and mind you, I'm a nobody) and within 24 hours it was resolved correctly, and they even next day shipped everything to me, which I did not expect.
It will be the last time I ever buy from Verizon instead of Apple directly, but at least it got resolved in the end.
[0]: Still might. I need the coverage of the big 2, unfortunately I can't jump to say, T-Mobile, as a result.
I had to go out of the country, so I overpaid my AT&T internet bill so it would cover 2 months and rounded up by ~10 cents to the nearest dollar amount.
First month bill, no problem. Second month bill, no problem.
Third month bill should be $amount -credit, nope. They took my credit, listed it as an underpayment and applied a fee.
So I go to the store; they can't help with account issues, you have to call.
I call, sit through the waiting music, get a rep who get a rep is quite obviously doesn't care. No "Sorry for our obvious billing mistake" or anything. They correct the account and ask if I will pay right now, I decide that I will since I don't trust their system to update in a timely manner.
The rep then has the audacity to talk about how AT&T charges a convenience fee to pay via phone but they are going to waive it this time.
AT&T fiber and Xfinity cable are the only options in my area....
I still can not understand how they made that error in the first place. It's not like accounting, credits and balances are a new thing. The bill even showed the credit transaction correctly, showing it coming out of the bill balance owed.
I do set up auto payment when I am sure the bill will be stable, this was while I was still in the introduction rate and I wanted to be aware of when the price change hit.
Now the question is, since they messed up what should be a simple accounting transaction, do I trust their billing system to have unfettered access to take funds from my bank :)
I'll let that marinate for a few years first before I decide to trust it entirely.
Though its not rural areas that are the only issue. There's saturation issues with other carriers in some of my travels. Only Verizon and AT&T doesn't fall apart comparatively.
It's still the fastest/only way to receive customer support for a lot of place. It's very sad but it's the truth.
The last time an airline screwed up and refused to fix their mistake the employee at the booth lowered her voice and said "Do you have twitter? You might try complaining there, they don't like it when people complain on twitter" which was just the most depressing thing to hear.
I can much quicker get an answer from Bank Of America--and get a Tier 3 Customer Service person to call me--on X than I can by calling their main number.
The old piece of advice if you were getting stonewalled was to write a personal letter to "$CEO_NAME, $HQ_ADDRESS". I wonder whether that still works today.
It often does. The other thing that has worked for me is contacting the legal department. Probably the same address, c/o legal.
Just don’t say something stupid like, “I’m going to sue you”. If you escalate too far they’ll wait for the summons.
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I worked in a department called “hot site support” back in the 90’s for Iomega (maker of the Zip drive). That meant I delt with two things, customers who spent over $100k on hardware, and customers that wiggled their way up to the CEO’s admin. I had carte blanche to resolve the issues and I was just 20 years old and early into my career.
Only if their software thinks you have enough followers, and the software thinks they aren't fake followers.
If you don't have enough potential impact, the humans may never even see your post.
If anyone thinks that insert company here cares about your tweet about your issue because they replies to insert even slightly famous person here, you're deluding yourself.
