Chris Ladd in the latest issue of Good magazine: Consumer Justice Online. Some great examples here of the power of the Internet to redress the balance of power between corporations and citizens. Excerpts:
Dave Stolte, the guy with the $3,000 iPhone bill, struck out dealing
with AT&T’s service representative. Stolte would have to pay, they
said, or AT&T would shut off his phone—and his wife’s. Desperate,
he sent letters both to AT&T’s CEO and to Apple’s, neither of whom
responded. He then sent the same letter to tech-blog extraordinaire
BoingBoing, which posted it immediately. Within three hours, a
high-level service rep called Stolte, apologized, and waived the entire
$3,000 balance. …Vincent Ferrari had heard how difficult canceling AOL’s service could
be, so when he wanted to cancel his, in June, 2006, he took the
precaution of recording the phone call. In a now-infamous
four-minute-and-57 second recording of customer-service hell, Ferrari
asks an astounding 14 times for the representative to cancel his
account and, despite being 30 years old at the time, was asked to put
his father on the line. In the following week, Ferrari’s personal
website crashed anew with each link from heavy hitters like the
Consumerist, MetaFilter, Fark, and BoingBoing, and again as the story
ricocheted through the traditional media, making appearances in The New York Times, the New York Post, CNBC, the Today show, and Nightline. Ferrari had created for AOL a very large digital black eye, seen by millions. …Thomas Hawk vs. PriceRitePhoto
In one of the first big blogger takedowns, Thomas Hawk exposed
PriceRitePhoto.com for baiting and switching a high-end camera. The
manager threatened he would “never be able to place an order on the
internet again.” After appearances of the story on Slashdot and
MetaFilter and in The New York Times, it’s PriceRitePhoto having order trouble.Michael Whitford vs. Apple
Michael Whitford said he didn’t spill anything on his MacBook. Apple
says he did. After pleading his case to an AppleCare manager, Whitford
took out his anger via YouTube, where he uploaded a video of himself
taking a sledgehammer to said MacBook. Three hundred thousand views
later, Apple reconsidered and offered him a new one.Krystyl Baldwin vs. Sprint
Krystyl Baldwin was pretty sure her $14,062.27 bill from Sprint was a
mistake. So she filed a complaint. And? Nothing. It took a high-traffic
YouTube video to clear up the mess. After being shared with 40,000
friendly viewers, her complaint was fixed.Brian Finkelstein vs.
ComcastBrian Finkelstein’s internet service was spotty, so Comcast sent a
repair technician to swap his router. When the technician fell asleep
on his couch and failed to fix the problem, Finklestein filmed it all,
then uploaded the video to his blog. Gizmodo and MSNBC carried the
story, and within 48 hours a team of Comcast repairmen arrived and
worked from 7 p.m. until midnight to fix the problem.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Great post, JD.
May I point out though, that corporate policy seems not to be “do the right thing” but instead “do the right thing when someone creates a PR problem for the company”
The above stories are exceptional, no doubt.
Still, I’d like to know what’s the ratio of this to “regular people” who have had unresolved complaints about malfeasance and unethical practices, but weren’t able to get wide publicity for their story.