complaints

Oddly, Though Ethics Alarms Had Already Named Comcast “Corporate Asshole Of The Year,” The Company Felt It Had Something Left To Prove…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

ernestine

I really don’t understand this at all. In October, when the viral story of how Comcast managed to get a customer fired from his job for insisting that the communications giant address his legitimate complaints, I wrote:

I have never heard of even one customer of any company losing his job as a consequence of that company’s refusal to address legitimate complaints. That is why Comcast gets its Corporate Asshole of the Year award early. Nobody’s going to top this.

Yet amazingly, Comcast has managed to have yet another tale of atrocious service and customer abuse get widespread publicity. This video, by YouTube exhibitor Sweetlethargy, tells the whole  jaw-dropping story:

In any normal consumer setting, a customer able to prove that he was  induced by a company representative to purchase a service under false pretenses would immediately receive an apology, and the service promised for the price offered. In this case, however, as you can see in the excruciating video, Comcast’s reaction is, “Sorry, we won’t honor what you were told.” Translation: Screw you. Sue us. Good luck with that.

The is reminiscent of the running gag that was once famous on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” the chaotic Sixties comedy show, in which comic Lily Tomlin would play a cruel, smug, nasal-voiced and snorting Bell telephone operator named Ernestine (above). Her specialty was telling infuriated customers who were receiving rotten telephone service that their complaints were futile. “We don’t care. We don’t have to care. We’re the telephone company!” she’d say.

Apparently this is Comcast’s attitude. Horror stories about Comcast service are all over the internet and social media, and heads aren’t rolling, the Board isn’t screaming, press releases aren’t issuing, and documented customer abuse keeps turning up. The company has nurtured a culture of carelessness, callousness and arrogance, and apparently believes that its services are too essential to suffer significant consequences.

What have you heard about Bell lately?

__________________

Pointer: Fark

Early Ethics Alarms 2014 Award: The Corporate Asshole Of The Year Is….Comcast

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Yeah, just try getting Comcast to fix your service issues, and you may find out exactly what it cares about, when you get your severance paycheck...just ask Conal O"Roarke.

Yeah, just try getting Comcast to fix your service issues, and you may find out exactly what it cares about when you get your severance paycheck…just ask Conal O”Roarke.

I don’t want to spoil the suspense or anything, but when a company gives a customer horrible service, keeps botching its attempts to address it, and then calls the customer’s employer about the persistence of his complaints, getting him fired as a direct result, attention, as Mrs. Willy Loman memorably said, must be paid.

Here is the whole awful story, as first described in Consumerist.

Conal O’Rourke  subscribed to Comcast in early 2013.  The company charged him, he says, for set-top boxes that hadn’t been activated; some of his bills were not being delivered as well, because they had his name wrong on the account. He met with a Comcast rep in May who said all would be resolved. It wasn’t. The problems got worse. In addition to still being charged for unactivated devices in his house, Comcast charged him twice for an additional  modem he did not have.

He decided to to cancel his service from these bozos in Oct. 2013,  but says a Comcast rep convinced him that the billing issues would be resolved and that he would get free DVR service and The Movie Channel for three months as compensation. I’ve been there, with DirecTV…except that my satellite service actually did what it said it would. Not Comcast, apparently. It sent Conal O’Rourke about a dozen pieces of equipment that he never ordered and didn’t want–DVRs, modem, standard boxes other stuff—and billed him $1,820 for it. Continue reading →

Final Ethics Verdict on TSA’s Feel-Up Pat-down

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I was flying this week, and the security procedures were smoother than ever. Now I am certain that my molestation at check points last year was unethical, and have sufficient evidence to conclude that it was based on government incompetence and willful disregard for my comfort, dignity, and rights.  I am also wondering, more than ever, if the ardent, supposedly liberal defenders of the indefensible feel-up pat-downs have learned anything about the dangers of blind government obeisance and partisan loyalty. I hope so.

The saga so far: Continue reading →

“Keeping It” in Seattle: Flunking the Duty To Stand Up To Anti-Speech Bullies

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Could it be time for an “Everybody Beat on Israel Day”?

Count me out. Still, there is finally an instructive example of bullies who don’t embrace radical Islam causing First Amendment timidity, and raising ethical issues too.

Seattle’s Department of Transportation sells advertising on city buses. When the “Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign” bought space to condemn Israel’s policies with ads headlined,‘Israeli War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work’ featuring a picture of children next to a bomb-damaged building,” the Department was flooded with protests by Jews and Israel supporters. Most of them were stern, indignant or argumentative, but about 25 conveyed an intention to disrupt or vandalize buses,take violent measures, or suggested that bus riders would soon be at risk.” Some examples:

  • “If you want to see how tough Jews can be, then go ahead and run those despicable ads and we’ll see who has the last word on this. If you run these ads, we will work together with our Jewish friends and others to shut Metro down.”

Democracy Works: Pat-Down Update and the Duty to Bitch

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I was traveling by air again yesterday. As usual, I went through airport security and, as usual, I set off the buzzer with my platinum hip, which try as I might, I just can’t get into one of those gray plastic trays. As usual, I was directed to the cattle pen waiting area until an agent could give me my enhanced pat-down, because also as usual, the quick, convenient, preferable and unjustly maligned full body scanners weren’t available.

I was asked if I was familiar with the new procedures, to which I answered, “You have no idea.” And the nice, friendly, professional agent game me the full-body massage, but with a difference: now, as he pointed out carefully, he was directed to use only the back of his hand when approaching my happy places, and he was extremely careful to avoid any touching that would make Sean Hannity complain on the radio.

All the bitching, you see, worked. Continue reading →

How the Government and Media Deceive Us With Statistics: The TSA Patdown Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The misleading use of statistics to deceive, mislead, and confuse the public is epidemic in both the public and the media, with too many examples to cite. Sometimes the statistics are wrong, but just assumed to be correct, like the persistent myth that 50% of all American marriages end in divorce. Sometimes the individual who uses the statistic uses them sincerely but incorrectly to support an argument that the numbers don’t really  support, such as columnist Richard Cohen’s recent use of international longevity statistics to “prove” America has an inferior health care system. (Message to Cohen: Freedom includes freedom to take risks, and America has always had a risk-taking culture, which is something to be proud of. Health care is just part of the longevity equation; life-style is a large component, and perhaps the largest. Caged animals live longer than those in the wild, but their quality of life is much worse. The relative merits of the U.S. health care system is subject to debate, but longevity statistics do not settle the issue.)

And sometimes the statistics are just pure, blatant deceit, designed to mislead by the government and relayed uncritically by a news media that is either too eager to support the Obama Administration and too lazy to apply critical reasoning.

Today’s example: as the furor grows over virtual sexual molestation and mistreatment of innocent air passengers under the Transportation Security Administration’s new procedures at airports (such as here, here, and here), the TSA is rushing to defend itself, and has come up with this argument: the complainers are a small minority, and the vast majority of the country—80%, in fact— approves of the new procedures. This morning, the Sunday talk shows cited this statistic over and over again as if it settled the issue.

The statistic is completely misleading. Continue reading →

The Indignity of Security Procedures, Civility Standards and Our Duty To Enforce Them

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Perhaps it is because I had to suffer two of the new airport security feel-ups last week, but by willingness to tolerate surliness, hostility and rudeness from security personnel is officially over. Oh, the TSA’s trained molesters are not the problem in that regard; they are almost always cheerful, polite and deferential, more so now, since they have to virtually thrust their gloved hands into my nooks and crannies. It is the security personnel controlling access to public buildings who are too often lacking in congeniality and professionalism, and I’m not putting up with it any more. You shouldn’t either. It is our duty not to put up with it Continue reading →

Katy Perry’s Cleavage and Sesame Street Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Sesame Street’s” producers yanked pop songstress Katy Perry’s upcoming appearance on the iconic PBS children’s show after parents complained about her low-cut dress. They had seen a preview of her duet with Elmo on YouTube, and were scandalized.

The complaint, to put it mildly had no merit. Continue reading →

Complaint Ethics, With A Dash of Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My wife had to deliver some documents to my son’s school, one of those large mega-magnet schools that are locked up tighter than Alcatraz during school hours to keep out drug-dealers, assassins, and street  mimes. After being blocked at “Entrance One” by a big guy in shades and a starter jacket (he looked like a club bouncer), she was sent to “Entrance Two.” There she encountered another security obstacle, a desk commanded by an imposing looking woman. There were four others seeking access. One of them, a suited gentleman, presented identification. One was identified by the woman at the desk as someone “who went to school here last year,” and he was allowed to pass the checkpoint on her recognizance alone. Another woman, who said she was a parent, also said was there to pick up something. She had no I.D., however “I’m not going to make you go back for your purse,” she was told. “Go on in.” My wife, also without her purse, was told she did have to present I.D., and had to hike back to the car and return with her driver’s license.

Should my wife report this arbitrary and obviously flawed execution of security procedures to school administrators? And a harder question..

Should she make an issue of the fact that both the woman at the desk and the parent she allowed to pass without I.D. were African American, and my wife is not? Continue reading →