Telecom blues turns into ‘victory for the little guy’
He posted a video on YouTube and told all his Facebook friends to watch it.
After a half million YouTube views this week, United Airlines apologized and said it would use the video for training and to improve customer service.
Adam Savage, co-host of the Discovery Channel TV show Mythbusters, wrote a Twitter post about his telecom nightmare while in Montreal last month.
He was stunned to get an $11,000 (U.S.) bill from his American cellular carrier, AT&T, after using a mobile modem to connect to the Internet from his laptop.
"AT&T is attempting to charge me 11K for a few hours of web surfing in Canada," he wrote using his Twitter name, donttrythis.
Savage created a huge stir since he has 70,000 followers. By the end of the day, AT&T was "very gracious about taking care of it all," he told the media.
These stories show how effective social media can be in helping to resolve consumer complaints.
Members of Facebook groups, such as Bell Canada Sucks and Beware of Bloomex, often write to me after finding my contact information there.
My blog, at ellenroseman.com, gets lots of traffic (about 250,000 hits a month). People find it after doing searches for company names such as Bell, Rogers, Aeroplan and Direct Energy.
Jennifer Okamura recently stumbled upon my website and wrote to me about her parents, who own a Japanese restaurant in Waco, Tex.
The couple had signed up for electricity with Direct Energy, not realizing they already had a contract with another firm, and would have to pay $2,929 to get out early.
Lisa Dornan, Direct Energy’s Houston-based director of public relations, promised to look into the complaint.
Readers tell me they get headaches while going through all the consumer laments on my blog business cards.
Bell Blues (March 2007) has 580 comments. Readers Seeing Red with Rogers (May 2007) has 105 comments. Your Call to TD Bank May Be Answered in India (January 2008) has 211.
Risa Shuman recently sent me a complaint "to add to your Bell Blues." She wanted to help her 87-year-old father, who cancelled his phone service after moving into a retirement home.
Since she has power of attorney, she had paid Bell’s final bill of $64 in full – only to receive another final bill of $107 the following month.
She called customer service and found out the second charge was an early contract termination fee.
"I explained that my father, a lifetime Bell customer, did not cancel his service by choice, but life’s circumstances had forced him to do so," she replied.
Bell replied that he had agreed to a two-year contract term, in which he received three months of free service and a $10 monthly discount.
"Although these promotions were applied to your father’s account, Bell has decided to credit the early termination fee of $150 as a gesture of goodwill," the executive office said.
Shuman’s response: "Another victory for the little guy."
You can catch my blog updates at twitter.com/ellenroseman. You can also find something else – a complaint about my column – at YouTube.
Mortgage broker Joe Wornato felt I was being superficial in writing about mortgage penalties and posted an eight-minute video a month ago.
I guess I don’t have to worry about it going viral. As of last night, there had been 37 views.
eroseman@thestar.ca
Filed under: news by Fred