I believe you have just summarized the root of the majority of problems that plague mankind. Mankind... there's an undeniable irony in today's definition of that word. Until(many) more people learn that greed is not a desirable trait, I'm afraid 'mankind' will continue its downward spiral. Can we fix it? Maybe. Let's all do our part by starting TODAY to be better humans. I suggest we all do something nice for someone, expecting nothing in return, and encourage that person to pass it on. Wouldn't it be great if we could actually start a trend?

I spent four hours Monday getting my internet service reinstated. When I opened my December bill I discovered that I had forgotten to send November's payment so there was a two-month balance. I immediately went to my banking site and sent the payment.

I got an email from the bank on December 15 that the payment had been made. The same day I got a notice from the Internet provider that my bill was past due and if I had paid it just disregard the notice, which I did.

Monday morning they shut down my internet service and I called them.

I don't care what time of day you call these people, the first thing you get is a recording telling you that they are presently experiencing unusually high call volumes and you would be better off to just go away. I was informed that they never received my payment and I could restart my Internet by paying what I owed them by credit card. I finally did that then called the bank.

They assured me that the bill had been paid on the 12th and emailed me a 'proof of payment' pdf document. One of the six people I had dealt with at the cable company had told me to just call back with the electronic transfer number on the proof of payment document and everything would be fine. Not so. The next stooge told me that I must fax the document to their accounting department and wait for them to do their magic. I faxed it to the number that I was given and called again.

Keep in mind that you never talk with the same person more than once so you must explain your circumstances all over again each time.

This guy called the accounting department and no, they had not received anything from me. I asked if I could send an email with it attached.

"We don't have email available."

I asked if I could speak with the accountant and he connected us.

Hallelujah!

She was a very nice lady who listened to my plight. She gave me her email address so I could send her the document then asked how much money I had sent on the 15th. When I told her she said she found it. It had somehow been placed in another account.

Since I paid with a card to get the damned thing turned back on, I now have two months of 'pre-paid' Internet service.

And it only took four hours of waiting on hold, speaking to half a dozen asses and one very nice lady in Accounting. She even sent me an email the next day with her work phone number and told me to call her if I had any more trouble with my account.

Now I won't mention the ISP but it's the same one that hosts The Home linked below.

Visit us at

The Home

I don't care what time of day you call these people, the first thing you get is a recording telling you that they are presently experiencing unusually high call volumes and you would be better off to just go away.

Comcast has the same damn recording.

Seems that the idea of screwing someone to get yourself something has been around a while. Yet there is certainly a deeply devoted following to this model currently.

The phone runaround game, it seems, is meant to deter or exhaust someone, so they will simply pay via credit card and just get it over with. Odd isn't it, that an automated system takes hours to negotiate has replaced the far more efficient human-operated system? No payrolls needed past the initial recording and audio construction, no pensions, benefits, office space, etc.

I have been attempting to read a rather long piece today from Jim Kunstler on the year ahead (and the years ahead) in his essay here (warning, the title of the essay is a bit naughty). But he makes many good points:

"Without reviewing all the vertiginous particulars of the year now ending, suffice it to say that the US economy fell on its ass and that the "global economy" did a face-plant as well. The American banking sector imploded spectacularly to the degree that investment banking actually went extinct -- as if a meteor landed on the corner of Madison Avenue and 51st Street. The response by our government was to shovel "loans" onto the loading dock of every organization that pretended to be something like a bank, while "bailing out" an ever-longer line of corporate claimants with a pitiable song-and-dance."

And:

"There are two realities "out there" now competing for verification among those who think about national affairs and make things happen. The dominant one (let's call it the Status Quo) is that our problems of finance and economy will self-correct and allow the project of a "consumer" economy to resume in "growth" mode. This view includes the idea that technology will rescue us from our fossil fuel predicament -- through "innovation," through the discovery of new techno rescue remedy fuels, and via "drill, baby, drill" policy. This view assumes an orderly transition through the current "rough patch" into a vibrant re-energized era of "green" Happy Motoring and resumed Blue Light Special shopping.
The minority reality (let's call it The Long Emergency) says that it is necessary to make radically new arrangements for daily life and rather soon. It says that a campaign to sustain the unsustainable will amount to a tragic squandering of our dwindling resources. It says that the "consumer" era of economics is over, that suburbia will lose its value, that the automobile will be a diminishing presence in daily life, that the major systems we've come to rely on will founder, and that the transition between where we are now and where we are going is apt to be tumultuous.
My own view is obviously the one called The Long Emergency.
The dialectic between the two realities can't be sorted out between the stupid and the bright, or even the altruistic and the selfish. The various tech industries are full of MIT-certified, high-achiever Status Quo techno-triumphalists who are convinced that electric cars or diesel-flavored algae excreta will save suburbia, the three thousand mile Caesar salad, and the theme park vacation. The environmental movement, especially at the elite levels found in places like Aspen, is full of Harvard graduates who believe that all the drive-in espresso stations in America can be run on a combination of solar and wind power. I quarrel with these people incessantly. It seems especially tragic to me that some of the brightest people I meet are bent on mounting the tragic campaign to sustain the unsustainable in one way or another. But I have long maintained that life is essentially tragic in the sense that history won't care if we succeed or fail at carrying on the project of civilization."

Or as the doctor told the fellow, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Surely, though, such events make for the best times to try and revise and reconsider how things work/don't work and try and move into some more mutually beneficial areas. I dunno. Maybe we are headed back to an old bartering system where a person could take a dozen eggs from their farm to the grocery store and trade it for meat or bread or pizza or something.

Sorry, I tend to ramble and this comment is already too long. Just thought the link to Kunstler was worth noting here.

These are some unpleasant experiences, some of which I have familiarity with. My perspective is that there is an ulimate business downside to bad service and bad products that ultimately lead to failure of the enterprise. I switched Internet providers solely based on response to an outage caused by a falling tree knocking all the lines from my house. The key was the ability to reach a person who was able to provide assistance.

Our experience with getting delivery of appliances from one major company was very poor, and Gay and I let them know that we would not buy anything that involved delivery. We found another company that sold very much the same large appliances, and who make a pretty major selling point their delivery policy, with one hour notice and delivery on time, any day, including Sunday. We have had consistently positive experiences with these folks and won't be shopping for what, in essence, is a commodity, from anyone else. In short, I think that frustration with bad customer service has led to business models that succeed because of excellent service.

Ironically, one of the reasons that auto companies are having such trouble is that they have built better and better products, going back to the Japanese changing the game by using Deming statistical process control quality methods. Cars last 150k - 200k miles now rather than 100k max not all that long ago.

Anyway, I guess what I am saying, fully realizing that it is a lot more complicated than this, is that what goes around comes around. As long as the consumer economy exists product quality and customer service will eventually define a wining position. This should be especially true with the sharing of information, reveiews, etc. now possible via the Internet.

Other models are not sustainable for long, any more than ever-increasing property values propped up by high risk mortgages.

What is really frustrating is getting bad customer service from someone with a monopoly (or the equivalent), so that you can't change service providers.

Warning: what follows is a long sob story.

We are lucky enough to have good medical insurance from TVA (although like everyone else, our premiums get higher and higher, and our services less and less). And we have no trouble with BC/BS paying our doctors. EXCEPT:

I have one provider who is out of network and does not file the claims for you. Therefore, I have to file them myself. After the first time they mistakenly paid the provider rather than us, I took to writing: I DID NOT SIGN BLOCK 13 in red on the claim forms (block 13 authorizes payment to the provider).

They've still mishandled it by paying the provider twice more since. The first two times, one phone call took care of the issue. But the last time was a doozy.

I called to report the problem, and was told a check would be arriving in 5-7 business days. Waited two weeks, called again, and was told "it's on someone's desk right now; you'll get a check in 5-7 business days. And we'll put a note in your file about this provider so that this doesn't happen again." Waited two MORE weeks, called again, and was told "the check is going out today. And would you like us to put a note in your file so that this doesn't happen again?" When asked why it took 4 weeks to mail a check, I got no response.

I asked to speak to a supervisor, who was predictably not available. Left her a voice mail to return my call, which she of course did not.

Three days later the check arrived. Unbelievably, it was for the amount they owed me PLUS the amount of a claim they'd already paid last summer. So now they'd overpaid me by abour $350.

I cannot tell you how much I was tempted to just keep it. But because I am fundamentally an honest person, I called, INSISTED on speaking to the supervisor, and told her she'd overpaid me. She wanted to argue with me about it.

Finally, she agreed to look into it. When she called me back a few hours later, it was "yup, we overpaid you."

The first thing I said was "I am NOT sending this check back and waiting for you to issue a new one. I'm depositing this check and I'll send you a check for the overpayment." She didn't like that much but she agreed to it.

Oh, and she "put a note in my file so that this won't happen again."

Not one of the people I talked with apologized for the mistake and my trouble, nor did the supervisor thank me for notifying them of the overpayment.

I can hardly wait till I file the next claim. :)

Milton Freidman's acolytes are delighted to see you shocked at such poor service if it means more profits for the elites. Face it, we're all a bunch of nobody suckers who can't afford to protest too loudly and if we're still eating regularly then we've got it too good and profits need to be increased.
I often think of the Ferengi characters from Star Trek when considering our multinational corporate overlords that always put short term increased profits over any other consideration. Surely they are all a mother's shame.
Time to rebel like Thoreau?

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson

Exactly how much of our economy is based on the concept of screwing the next guy?

Does anyone think the public, the consumer, the little guy has contributed to these problems at least to some extent? Are we willing to pay for good service? Are we willing to pay for a "good" product? Are we willing to plan ahead? Are we willing to accept a 5% return on our investment? Are we willing to purchase a 1,500 sq ft house instead of a 2,500 sq ft house? Are we willing to vote for government representatives that are willing to stand up to TVA, AT&T, etc.?