S: Is for taking a stand

Once upon a time my gas was pumped for free. A real live person from America answered the company I was calling’s phone. Banks wooed you with gifts and treated you as a valued customer. There was a time as a customer you were always right and it was their privilege to help you. TIPS were not an entitlement but to insure proper service. Those days are long gone as we sit complacently silent. Companies have gotten away with rudeness, blatant disrespect of the law, and corruption because we have allowed it. I say, no more! Lets coin the phrase touted by Peter Finch in the film “Network” “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. We all have scenario’s that push us over the edge that make that statement becomes an anthem. Here’s my top 3:

Dell: Need I say it again “Get those laptops off your lap”. This should not be me telling you this. Dell’s laptops are causing bodily injury. I was just informed besides erythema ab igne and skin cancer it causes pancreatic cancer. The later is hard to detect and even harder to cure. How many teenagers out there is this affecting? Dell has known about it since 2004. Known for having the worst customer service they raised the budget to $150 million (see wikipedia to confirm), yet it has not improved. Money down the drain or great PR, you decide. The funding would have been better put to use by keeping its customers healthy instead of hiding behind a pact a lies. I have a case number but no human has contacted me except the expert lawyer I contacted who agrees there is a problem here.

Cingular: I write about this company for my friend Tom. Tom’s razor was one of the worst phones I ever knew. He then found out it had been recalled. Now try to get a cingular sales person to admit cingular’s at fault. Not a happening thing. I think they hire the stupidest, most arrogant human beings they can possibly find. Maybe the job criteria is you must be a great actor and posses theses qualities, whatever the case this exists. At first the sales people told Tom the phone was not on recalled finally after six months he gets a new phone. They put his sim card in and he goes home. In this day and age we forget each other’s numbers, as they are conveniently stored in our phones, so you can imagine Toms reaction to find his entire phone book had been deleted. For six months his phone cut out and it is in essence a disaster. Cingular’s compensation….1/2 months charges waved. They have overcharged him on occasion and kept him on the phone for four hours to solve a problem that could have been done in a store in less than 20 min. There is no one to complain to because no one knows who owns cingular. Are they like Enron? Do they exist?

Chase Manhattan Bank: You work hard at your job for somebody. You wait patiently to be paid. The check finally arrives on the coldest day of the year. So instead of going to your bank to deposit the check, which is father away and takes a few days to clear even though there is another Chase branch across the street, you go to the bank where the check was issued. You have ample ID. You’ve cashed checks there before. The money is in the account. It’s a company check. Should be simple right…WRONG! Chase Manhattan has a policy that if you don’t have an account with us you can’t cash our checks. It seems the poor teller who I had gotten before was disobeying policy. She had done this for 9 months. Policy that may I state is written nowhere, I know because I asked several times. After the humiliation of being turn down I asked to speak to the manager who rudely told me if I wasn’t a Chase customer I could leave. She didn’t ask if I wanted to be a customer. She didn’t want to help. Dreading the cold I was persistent and she finally gave me the head office number. I called and spoke to Paul Haskins @ 212 270-9300 who was the assistant to the chairman or so he said. He reiterated what the branch manager said and when I asked where was this written he stated nowhere. Isn’t this against the law? If I’m not mistaken it is called monopoly and fraud. On my way down to my bank I stopped at every bank on the way to ask is this policy. The answer is NO only unwritten at Chase!

All of these companies are disregarding human decency. I write this column as solace to myself for being able to speak out. I write this column to encourage you to have a voice and stand up for your rights. I write this column to make a difference even if it is in just one person’s life for we never know what the one person will do when encouraged. Maybe someday once upon a time will be today and become a F.A.C.T.