Verizon’s Bad PR Situation: War Widow Forced to Pay $350 Early Termination Fee
This is where having empowered customer service reps –employees who can take common-sense initiative– can save your company a ton of bad publicity, and potentially a ton of dough:
After a woman’s husband died in Afghanistan, a marine felled by an IED, she moved back to her home town to be closer to her family and grieve. In the smaller town, she couldn’t get any reception from Verizon, so she called them up to cancel. Despite being a widow and Verizon not living up to its contractual obligations to provide actual cellphone coverage, they slapped her with a $350 early termination fee.
If you don’t have any coverage, you’re supposed to be able to break your contract without penalty, but customer service reportedly told the widow “Nothing could be done” about the fee.
Reached by CBS13, Verizon’s PR department promised to look into it.
via Verizon: Die Fighting In Afghanistan, Pay $350 Early Termination Fee – The Consumerist.
It’s pretty simple: usually the most common-sensical, decent thing to do is best. Or, you can have your PR people work overtime to clean up the mess.
Alex has earned a reputation for success and ingenuity from his more than twenty years experience in public relations, journalism, marketing and broadcasting. His career has spanned several industries including healthcare, television, non-profit organizations and higher education.
His work in the news media included positions as an editor, journalist, radio talk show host and vice president of Kansas City Public Television.
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NEW Verizon PR disaster looming.
Verizon now decides to give a FREEBIE Blackberry gold handset to a racist web writer.
Look at the article and scroll down to the text :
Chet the owner of the Corktown was a true Gentleman; I had a meeting with Public Relations person for Verizon in the morning at the Hotel. She gave me a new BlackBerry Bold to review and we had a good conversation.
NOW read the rest of his article:
http://www.hobotraveler.com/travel-journal/the-20-people-i-met-flying-to-the-usa.html
This man is a racist and a bigot and he publishes his racist remarks and STILL he travels to African countries?
And NOW Verizon give him a free Blackberry?
Is this real world ?