Customer (dis)Service

Some companies just don't fucking get it. A handful of them do. I thought I'd start a list of customer service experiences I've had with various companies over the years. I guess I'll update it periodically. If you have any good stories, or nightmares, chime in.

American Express- Generally very good. They have the reputation of standing by customers, and by and large, they do. I estimated the other day that I've had about 1,500 Amex transactions in the past 10 years, and 1,496 of them have gone swimmingly. I won the four disputes, but not without a fight, multiple letters, and persistent phonecalls. In my experience, Amex tends to side with the last party to make an argument. Remember- however good an American Express customer you are, the merchant is probably a better American Express customer.

Countrywide Home Loans- Horrific, at best. I'd rather have an airbag deploy in my face than keep using them. But I can't escape. Yet. Long waits on the phone, near-impossible automated navigation, hold-music that makes you want to commit hari kiri, and mortgage rates that you can always count on to be higher than everyone else's. Refinancing with them was a fairly miserable experience. So why the hell do I keep using them? Unfortunately, they are one of the only mortgage companies that won't "transfer your papers" to other mortgage companies, like a good mortgage company will do. What does that mean? It means you have to originate a new loan to refinance with someone else. And that means you pay taxes on the full mortgage amount. I didn't feel like ponying up $7,000 just for the satisfaction of getting away from them, although I did think about it. I didn't choose them- as is common after a closing, my mortgage was sold to another company. I just lucked out. Buying a house? I'd recommend a loanshark over Countrywide Home Loans.

Time Warner- I appear to be one of the lucky few who hasn't had the misfortune of falling into the endless vortex that is their no-help line. But I've heard stories. Anyone got one?

Verizon- Mediocre. Some people love them. I'm pretty neutral with this company. Overall, they appear to have their act together. I called them today to ask why all of their DSL deals are less than half of what I've been paying them every month for the last two years. After being disconnected twice by an automated woman who said their system couldn't handle the call volume (was this is a phone company I was calling?) I managed to get it lowered by $7 per month, as if that's going to make a difference in my life. They're not bad. And these days, that's good.

Chase- Run from them, don't walk. I transferred a balance from a credit card I had to a Chase credit card after being pummelled for months by 68773944577 of their misleading 0% transfer offers. It's been eight or nine months and without exaggeration, every single month I have to call them and question another strange charge on my bill. If it's not a dollar for some bogus charge, it's $11 for some useless credit protection service I never asked for. All the while, they rarely miss an opportunity to wake me up at 8:30am on a Saturday to try to sell me some other shit I don't need, in an accent I can't understand. You'll enjoy letting mousetraps snap on your eyelids more than you'll like dealing with Chase.

Con Ed- So far so good. I keep paying them, and they keep my lights on. It works.

Timberland- Very good. I've owned a few pairs of Timberland boots over the years- one pair actually lasted for 15 years, and they weren't even worn out. A week after I bought a new pair, the top edge tore off as I was pulling them on. Obviously, a rare manufacturing defect, because they make a great boot. I wrote them a letter and they exchanged them for another pair without question. So I'll keep buying Timberlands. And since you're reading this, you'll probably go out and buy a pair of Timberlands too. And this is the best kind of advertising a company can ever hope to have.

The heckler was Black. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Am I the only one siding with Kramer on this?

I know that hecklers are a fact of life for performers. I've always been worried about being in an audience that has one.

I saw the video. I saw the apology. More importantly, I heard some of the comments made by the rude asshole who initiated it. Have you ever known anyone personally who would yell out something inappropriate to a comedian in front of an entire audience? His parents must be very proud.

Performing is not as easy as it looks. Just ask my friend Jon, who does it almost every night. Richards was provoked and annoyed repeatedly by people who should have been asked to leave. And in defending himself, he kinda lost it. It doesn't make him a racist. For the record, I hear Black people – including a lot of people in my company – call each other "Nigger" all day long. They seem surprisingly okay with it, too.

Besides, where was the security? If I was a bouncer at the Laugh Factory, I'd start dusting off my resume right about now.

Then of course, the whole thing spiraled downward, until there were no more people in the audience. Make no mistake; folks in a crowd will do what everyone else in the crowd is doing. The collective intelligence of a large group is always dumber than the individuals. So as a few people left, the ones who remained felt dumb, and they got up and left too. No one wants to feel dumb. Believe me, most people weren't leaving because they were offended.

Some comedians take it well. I've seen Dane Cook rebound fabulously from a heckler. And of course, Jerry Seinfeld's famous response to a heckler was, "This is my office. Would you like it if I came to your office and heckled you?" Crowd goes crazy. Heckler is embarrassed. Show moves on. Mr. Richards wasn't so lucky. He made a bad choice, but it was a result of someone else's bad choice.

In fact, there are some theatres in my neighborhood I can't even go to anymore to because of all the... let's call them minorities, and I don't mean Jews. For some reason, certain cultures love to talk back to the screen. Not to mention bringing their crying 3-year old children to the movies, even if they're not appropriate for children. I don't care how upstanding and politically correct you are, you know exactly what I mean. And you know how fucking annoying and unfair it is to everyone else. Does that make me a racist?

Michael Richards didn't attack anyone. He defended himself poorly from someone else's attack on him. Why are we demonizing the "hecklee", simply because his response to an ongoing provocation wasn't nice? You won't see any White people up in arms over the "Cracker" comment. But then, I've never been a big proponent of a proportional response.

You still love Michael Richards, and you know it. He deserved a little bit of quiet during his performance, he was totally broken up over how he reacted, and I do believe he deserves a statement of apology from the guys in the audience who started this whole thing.

2 parts Andy Kaufman + 1 part Jackass = Borat

Ok, I'm officially on Borat overload.

And yet, I can't recommend this movie enough. The truth is, I haven't laughed this hard in months. Well, at least not since my good friend Jon Clarke told me he once saw Cookie Monster eat a telephone.

Borat made $30 million in its opening weekend. Pretty good considering it looks like it only took about 50 grand to make it.

I didn't know Jack.

Well, Jack Palance died. He was one of my favorite 'B' actors, along with Charles Bronson.

One of Jack Palance's less gleaming accomplishments was probably a voiceover he did for an Ortega Taco TV spot I wrote in 1992. For some reason, I remember that they paid him $85,000 for a four-hour session. This was 1992 – That's around $200,000 in today's money. Not bad for half a day's work.

Sometime during the session, I found the nerve to ask him if he could read a certain line with a little more enthusiasm, and I performed a few words showing how I wanted it read. In front of our whole team, he replied to me, "If that's enthusiasm, we're ALL going under." I was pretty embarrassed at the time, but looking back on it, the spot did kinda suck.

But that was nothing. He was known for telling his directors they shouldn't even be directing traffic, much less movies. I guess I got off easy.