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This is mandatory reading: http://macwhiz.com/blog/art-of...

Realize that politics and sociology of most businesses makes such embarrassments a very high priority to resolve, especially if they're chump change to the organization in question. http://macwhiz.com/blog/art-of-turboing/

Just be careful not to get the receptionist's blood on your hand...

You call the switchboard (it can take some digging) and request the office of the CEO, or (better) send an email to the entire executive suite. Frequently email addresses are publicly available or are some variant of first.last@example.com.

I've utilized both techniques at various times.

While travelling in Australia with an (I was told at the sales location) International-capable SIM-swappable phone, that I found out was in fact locked, I emailed the CEO of Cingular, copying a good friend of mine who covers the mobile sector for a tech publication, requesting the phone be unlocked (this after several rounds of frustration on long-distance international tech support). My host was awakened at 5am by a call from the US the next morning.

On discovering significant 419 spam transiting through Microsoft's Hotmail servers, I called the Microsoft switchboard, requested the SVP of the appropriate department, was transferred to him directly, he picked up within two rings, we spoke briefly, he promised that the person responsible would call me within the hour, fifteen minutes later I was talking with the person in charge of Hotmail abuse mitigation, and we worked to resolve the problem over the next several months. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but their response here impressed me immensely.

Another spam issue turned out to be a service run by a contractor at a southeastern university. After getting the brush off from the guy at his personal account (and tracking down his consulting gig), I sent a round of emails escalating one level up the university org chart, eventually hitting the president's office. By the third or fourth round I'd gotten the resolution I'd hoped for in the first place.

Issues with delivery through Yahoo (and months of zero useful responsiveness from their help desk and CTO and the self-reporting web tools) led me to finally email the entire executive suite (as far as I could identify -- this was a few CEOs ago) with an email subject line "Gentlemen, you have a problem", containing a brief synopsis and pflogsum extracts comparing delivery rates and times through Yahoo and other major email service providers. Got a response from the "concierge" desk and resolution within a couple of days.

In another case, an airline's exceptionally poor service led me to write an essay and post it to my website (as I'd promised the CSR I'd do when I requested hotel accomodations to compensate for fouling up both legs of my journey and stranding me at an airport overnight). I didn't get the resolution I'd wanted, but my piece generated a number of emails to me from both other frustrated passengers, and a number of airline employees and investors as the company struggled to stay solvent. It ultimately lost that battle, and I cried very, very little.

Look up "the art of turboing". Realize that politics and sociology of most businesses makes such embarrassments a very high priority to resolve, especially if they're chump change to the organization in question. http://macwhiz.com/blog/art-of-turboing/

argue my way up the manager food chain

What you fail to understand is that the customer-accessible part of the manager food chain in the vast majority of companies is approximately two people tall: CSR and supervisor. (Depending on the company and nature of question, you may be able to get to tier2 support; hence the "approximately".)

You will have better luck...

• Just calling back. Virgin Mobile's policies used to differ depending on which call center your call got routed to, but even in less extreme cases, some reps are nicer than others.
• Turboing. In particular, some companies have started to have "Executive Support" hotlines (Sprint comes to mind.) Save these for a last resort. GetHuman is also useful.
• Moving horizontally. Try web order support, activations, billing, customer service, terminations, etc.
• Being nice instead of nasty.
• Writing. Yes, seriously. I've resolved many issues just by sending the entity in question a nastygram. People still take snail-mail seriously.

OTOH, support that says "first install windows" doesn't get my vote for anything positive. At all. Support for a PRINTER problem. A TCP/IP connected printer! (Fortunately I had a Mac I could throw on the network, but I was not and am not pleased.)

I have two suggestions for you:

1. Learn the art of turboing, and
2. Buy a different brand of printer next time.

Even better, reread this classic gem that ought to be bookmarked by everyone: The Art of Turboing

learn to turbo

In other words, go right to the top - contact the Verizon CEO.

You might want to check out The Art Of Turboing. It explains what to do when you can't get a good answer From Tech Support Pretty well. Also, for an example of really bad Tech Support, see CompUSA: How not to handle a turboing customer

You might want to check out The Art Of Turboing. It explains what to do when you can't get a good answer From Tech Support Pretty well. Also, for an example of really bad Tech Support, see CompUSA: How not to handle a turboing customer

Good advice. For a bit more detail see this link on The Art of Turboing.

The key is not to do it except when there is no alternative (sounds like your case), to contact the right person in the company, and keep it polite.

Or go to the company website... download their Annual Report and get the phone number for their corporate switchboard... and get in touch with a real human... fast!

http://www.macwhiz.com/articles/art-of-turboing.ht ml

I dug up this article about how to get results when you've run through the normal support channels and have been blown off. Basic summary: Shoot for the top and expect to be pushed aside, hopefully to someone who is still very high up and capable of kicking ass and taking names.

Last but not least:
file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau
file a complaint with your state's Attorney General
take them to small claims court
You could file complaints with the postmaster general, but they only take action after receiving large volumes of complaints.

Perhaps turboing the whole thing would be an appropriate response. It sounds as though the purchasers quite thoroughly exhausted their normal avenues of support, so the next reasonable step in my mind would be start at the top and work their way down. It's worked for me before.

Check out http://www.macwhiz.com/articles/art-of-turboing.ht ml for advice on how to do this successfully. It's really a shame that it seems to be such an unknown approach.

Perhaps you might want to turbo this...

It sucks that the law-enforcement agencies won't help private individuals; however, since it's a company that's being hacked, they should be able to put their resources on it.

What's turboing you may ask? Turbing is, the actions of a customer who goes around the normal technical support process by contacting a senior person in the chain of command.

I'd recommend you check out The Art of Turboing.

Matt