10 years ago, it was easy to actually reach a senior executive or at least their assistant... I once spoke to the actual one-and-only personal assistant to the then-president of Sprint after a so-called "executive customer service" drone insisted that no one could solve my problem and there was no one higher on the ladder than him. Magically, the supervisor of the person with no supervisor called me back the same day and my three-month odyssey was resolved in minutes.

Another time, while trying to get a payment that what was thenGTE telephone (now Verizon) had cashed but not credited to my account, an unhelpful person in the credit department, when asked for a supervisor, told me "we're all supervisors in this department." After reaching an actual executive in their corporate headquarters, I got about 4 phonecalls from regional VPs, area managers, department supervisors and so forth, and letters of apology, along with being told by one of the VP's that he'd had a (in his words) "come to Jesus" meeting with the department manager that instructed that all call center employees were supervisors.

But there is one other very, very extreme step that I've used when nothing else works. I've used it only 3 times in 25 years, and it's worked each time.

I've found the name of the president or chairman and used public real estate records to identify where s/he lives, and then sent a short, very respectful overnight letter to his or her home, apologizing for contacting them at home but explaining that I've tried literally everything else, and it's that or a very public small claims action combined with major press release.

In each case, some horrified vice president (NOT some "executive customer service" call center agent) has called me within 48 hours and fallen all over themselves to apologize, before handing me off to someone who will resolve the situation, with a request that I call them back personally if the matter isn't resolved to my satisfaction. I have gotten the impression that, at that point, I could literally have asked for the moon and they would have gotten it for me... but my approach has always been to never ask for more than what's reasonable, so as not to "poison the well."

In a few cases, I've been able to leverage my rolodex of these higher-up contacts to resolve other issues with the same company years later, and they've always been very friendly and helpful.

It's unfortunate that one has to take this sort of action to get help so often these days, but it's nice to know that in most cases, when you finally do get past the multiple firewalls of call center staff intentionally put in place to keep complaints from reaching management, they are genuinely interested in solving the problem, if only to avoid bad publicity.

calchip

Proletariat

SigmundTheSeaMonster

Zaos

WhitRD

pixelperfect

increaser

nordictom

Everyone concerned with this frightening trend of big business to bite the hand that feeds it should make sure that Netflix brave decision is applauded, and successful.

Gary Pelphrey

Bats1

Kim

Sportsfan22

Thanks for the tip.

saintonge

QuirkyRachel