Customer Disservice

I just had a major corporation recently attempt to screw me over.  It's probably something you've experienced too.  After 10 years of my monthly payment being due on the 14th of the month, the company, unbeknownst to me, changed the billing due date to the 11th.  I discovered this when I sat down on the 10th and saw the change.  I called the company, who insisted the change was to make things better for me, but she couldn't explain exactly how it made things better.  She admitted a lot of people were complaining about the change, but since I called, I'd be able to get the late payment fee waived.  I just had to call back after I'd been assessed the late fee and get it removed.  When I asked why they couldn't save me a call and fix it now, they insisted they wish they could, but they made a rule which said you had to be accessed the late fee before having the late fee removed.

Why did this company do this to their loyal customers?  This was a money grab.  By changing the due date, what they really did was 1) ensure millions of their customers will be late with their payments.  2) With many people paying their monthly bills with electronic bill pay, most won't even realize they're late on their payments.  3) Many of the people who complained will forget to call back, ensuring the late fee isn't refunded.  And  4) a few of their clients will be assessed multiple penalties because they will be late with their payment every month for a year.

This company might just make 150 million dollars by simply screwing over their customers.  This money will likely be used for executive bonuses, and for maximizing stock options by infusing a one time massive influx of profit to help prop up the stock share price.

They did this because of greed.

Most companies used to have morality and ethics.  I was a Business major in college, and we were taught the institution of a corporation existed for the benefit of the shareholders, the customers, the employees, and (to a lesser extent) the suppliers.  Somewhere in the 1980's things dramatically changed.

In the 80's, corporate executives started placing themselves atop everyone else.  They insisted the company isn't successful without a strong executive class, so why shouldn't they get a little extra.  To a point, they weren't wrong. Good executives work 80 hours a week and are always on call.  Their business is their priority.  They don't take vacations, unless it's a working vacation.  Good executives are worth it, BUT they were already reaping the benefits of a much higher salary, usually two to three times the average worker's salary.  They also had executive benefits which were designed to make their hours in the office nicer, while supplying their family with personal benefits (company car, health care, dental, retirement accounts, college savings plans) to make up for the long days.

Back then, the executive class started asking questions.  "Why are we ONLY making two to three times the average worker beneath us?"  "Why are Holiday bonuses optional, as we, the executive class, surely deserved that additional income?"  "Why doesn't the company reward us first, regardless of the company's overall performance, considering we put in the long hours?"  "Considering we're executives, shouldn't we be given more appreciation regardless of whether I do a good job or a bad job?"

It's not all corporate executives who are massive jerks, but it's a shocking amount of them, positioned in pretty much every major corporation in America, giving hard working executives who truly care about the customer and the corporation a bad name.  It's as if the bad executives watched 'It's a Wonderful Life,' but instead of admiring George Bailey for putting the Savings and Loan ahead of his own personal interests, they admired Potter.  "Hey, the wealthy guy got to keep the $8000!  He's the real hero of the film!"

Wall Street starting playing this game too.  Used to be when you bought a stock, the stock went up or down depending on how wisely you picked.  It was very similar to gambling, but in the 1980's speculation became the name of the game.  If speculators felt your company should've earned 17 cents on the share, then it had better be 17 cents.  If the company only made 12 cents on the share, even though they were undeniably successful, the company was considered a failure, because they weren't where Wall Street said they should be.  Companies started getting punished for not being successful enough.

It'd be like playing the card game 21.  They have a King and an 8 (18) and they tell the dealer to "hit me!"  He gives them a 9 (27), so they go bust.  The card player shouldn't be able to punish the dealer for giving him the 9, just because he thought the next card was supposed to be a 3!  "It's your fault my gambling is horrible!  You were successful, but not successful enough, so fire all the executives, shut down half their locations, and prepare the company to be sold off as parts and scrap."

We're now witnessing the long term effects of these two disgusting business trends:  executives desperate to keep the money and benefits train rolling on in by keeping the quarterly margins constantly increasing, and Wall Street speculators trying to make someone else responsible for their reckless behavior.  These two traits have placed the customer in the cross hairs.  Customers, who are supposed to be the main focus of a corporation, are now a revenue source the executives treat atrociously, with the end goal of taking their money away whether they want to give it up or not.

The story I shared of my family's horrible Delta flight experience is a prime example.  We paid a company $1300 for their services.  Let's stop there.  For many Americans, $1300 is their entire disposable income for two to three years.  I've rarely given any business that much money to provide me a service.  Delta didn't have to sell their tickets for the price they did.  Delta themselves set the price and offered the consumer their product, but in their mind, I'm a jerk for wanting to give them my money.

Every Delta employee I ran into, outside of the stewardesses, was an absolute jackass.  They chewed me out, acting as if me wanting to pay them $1300 to take their flights was some sort of grand privilege they bequeathed upon me.  The worst was the gate agent in Atlanta, who came running at us on the concourse from the gate to the plane AFTER we had checked in, slapped a sticker on our bag, stated "BLAH BLAH BLAH" (seriously, no one around us understood what she had said) and when I asked her what she said, she turned around and yelled "you heard what I said."  The stewardess, using an understandable form of language, explained we had to check our bags underneath the plane because the flight had too many bags.  Of the eight overhead compartments around us, there was a total of ONE SMALL BAG in all of them.  There was plenty of room, they just added a hurdle to be asses.

After sharing my Delta story on my radio show, I had numerous people claim they had similar experiences.  It seems the airline industry, an industry who only 15 years ago was pleading for customers to take a flight after 9/11, has adopted a 'treat the customer buying our cheapest tickets awful, and keep reminding them they could get treated better if they just give us $200 additional per ticket' policy.  This S&M, school yard bully mentality is built around the insane idea a customer spending $1300 needs to be punished, and either they'll pay more to be treated better, or not come back.

To be fair, the stewardesses on both the flight to and from Atlanta were very nice, but considering how their parent company treats their own customers, they should scream '(Blank) You' as everyone deplanes.

Moving payment dates and being massive jerks is minor compared to what Wells Fargo did.  They actually stole money from their customers, likely hundreds of millions, for the purpose of funneling executives bigger bonuses, and making the stock price soar so executives and Wall Street speculators could cash out their stock holdings at high levels.  There were so many different infractions, so many different ways Wells Fargo was cheating their customers (late fees, fake accounts, car financing shenanigans, stealing people's houses[!!!]) it's hard to comprehend.  Wells Fargo was the end game in the movie Ocean's 13, when EVERYTHING was rigged.

The reason John Stumpf and Carrie Tolstedt, the executives who oversaw this massive shakedown, did so was because they knew they'd get away with it.  Wells Fargo pulled back some of the salary and bonuses the two of them got, but they still each walked away with tens of millions of dollars, with no jail time.  Not even a charge filed!  An African American man steals $15 from a store and he's going away for life, but make up a fake mortgage your own company has no record of, play a game of eviction chicken with a blindsided homeowner, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from that individual, then do similar shake downs over and over and over again, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in outright theft, as well as theft in the form of falsely inflated stock option profits and undeserved bonuses, and you get to enjoy the country club $200 a plate Sunday buffet for the rest of your life.

What can we do about this?  Very little.  The reason these companies are doing this is because they know they have their customers cornered.  They're confident you'll stay and get treated poorly so they won't change.  Eventually they'll even get more brazen, demanding you pay up or else.  Those needy executives desperately want that third luxury yacht!

Our current Republican government will also do nothing.  They're hoping to borrow the yacht, and (frankly) Republicans get sexually aroused watching corporate America screw over the little guy under the auspices of greed.  They hate the poor and working class, so for them, punishing them for being less affluent is foreplay.

The only thing we can hope for in our current environment is the greed gets too outrageous, causing the company to stumble, with infractions so bad even the Republicans in Congress can't turn a blind eye any further, with executives having to beg for public forgiveness, promising changes in corporate culture.  Mind you, none of the evil parties will end up going to jail, likely living high on the hog with the stolen money they worship, but at least there'd be hope the company would stop with the 'legal' theft.  Then again, nothing ruins a company faster in this day and age than being 10 cents below where Wall Street speculators have pegged their stock.  This is a double edge sword too, as the bits and pieces of the company are usually folded into a larger corporation, one which might already be treating their customers worse.

When Democrats get back in power, we need to make perp walks happen.  Nothing scares these people more than being led out of their offices in cuffs.  It would seem to be a no brainer for the people who are stealing millions from their customers.  It's sad: if these companies would attempt to steal a million dollars from a single billionaire, they'd get arrested, but steal a billion dollars from your middle and lower income customers, $25 - $100 at a time, over years, and we'll give you the Executive of the Year award!

Corporate Executives, I know many of you think you're Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street, the guy who did the 'greed is good' speech. Putting aside you've taken what was supposed to be a horrifying speech condemning Gekko's unredeemable character and turned into your executive club motto, treating your customers so poorly will eventually destroy the company, something you use as your own personal piggy bank.  Maybe, if we end up in another Great Depression, you'll be like many of the wealthy people from back in the 1930's, forced to live the existence you feel is beneath you.  That's what it took to shake the corporate barons of yore to their senses; seeing their friends and family homeless and starving to death.  It's a shame that's the only scenario where you jackasses will wake up from your misguided greed worshipping.

Bad modern executives are not Gordon Gekko, but rather another more spot on movie character, Sean Penn's version of Daulton Lee from Falcon and the Snowman, a spoiled, mentally compromised brat who wants to have everything, but doesn't have the soul or brain power to accomplish it in an honest and decent manner.  Instead, he manipulates his way through life, hoping the world he's created for himself doesn't collapse inward.

If the world does collapse for these bad executives, at least the customers will have a front row seat for when the walls come a crumbling down.