REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE



Dear Mr. CEO:

I am annoyed, aggravated, angry and -- let's not beat about the bush -- royally p...d off by your miserable telephone company .... But let me calm down, so that we may engage in a frank and polite exchange of views. My view being that your so-called customer service is a hopelessly bungled, messed-up tangle of random connections, maintained by idiot answering machines... But again, I should control myself. Please forgive this emotional outburst, it is not in my character. Let me rather describe to you what happened in calm, measured words.

Recently I had occasion to travel to Europe. It was a rainy day, the airport was a shambles because of renovation, the cafeteria was closed and I was hungry. I am only mentioning this to set the mood, you understand. All of a sudden I was struck by the thought of perhaps having left the oven on at home. Such doubts often beset me when traveling. I decided to call my son and alert him to the danger of a possible conflagration. This needed a long- distance call. No problem. Didn't I have my calling card with the secret 14 digit number, so generously issued by your company? Here is what I did.

I dialed your friendly customer number and a friendly voice came on the line and invited me to "dial the number I wanted to dial." After doing this, another friendly voice asked me to say CALLING CARD . Following this a third friendly voice asked me to dial my card's number , and finally a fourth friendly voice told me that number was invalid. I'll give you this, you really know how to pick voices; the last one actually sounded sorry for me.

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to contact a live person -- any live person -- in your company. I reached many kind voices, all female, all asking me to press the number 1,2 or 3 - once even 4 - to reach other kind voices. It was a nightmarish experience.

After a while I accidentally reached a male voice telling me that a representative would be speaking to me shortly. This message was repeated with great sincerity every two minutes or so. In between I was entertained with wonderful stories about what your company could do for me , such as providing me with a calling card, for example. It was at that point that I began to act out of character, bystanders told me later.

Meek though I am, your company has managed to really ... But let that be. I am returning to you my calling card, cut in fourteen pieces, one for each digit. Yours sincerely, AK.

At Random - Adrian Korpel