When Stephanie the AT&T "escalation affairs administrator" lied to Jan about why her phone couldn't be repaired for several days, she probably didn't know what Jan did for a living.

Stephanie told her that AT&T was experiencing "massive, massive outages." Jan is a journalist. Whoops.

From the Arkansas Business:
"Massive, massive outages" is a news story to me. I told Stephanie so and went into reporter mode. Stephanie said a media relations officer would call me at work "by the end of the day," while declining to give me that person's name or her own last name.

I called the Public Service Commission in my capacity as a reporter. The agency knew nothing of "massive, massive outages" but would check. The PSC a bit later: "We've had one outage complaint from North Little Rock on the 25th for AT&T but nothing from Little Rock." It turns out that Stephanie was lying. Suprising? No. Did they turn Jan's phone back on once she put on her reporter hat and went digging? Immediately.

Jan doesn't think that's fair:
More calling. Finally, Andy Morgan, a spokesman for AT&T in Oklahoma City, told me, "We're under a service emergency. The primary reason is the rain." But instead of "massive, massive outages," it was more like "several hundred," Andy said.

I assured Andy I didn't want special treatment, that I'd called as a journalist only because of Stephanie's explanation of "massive, massive outages," that I'd wait my turn. But when I got home from work that day, my phone was working.

It shouldn't be like this. You, Dear Reader, are probably not a journalist. But you deserve the same consideration. And if your utility is indeed experiencing "massive, massive outages," you'll probably try to be patient.

But you might not seek to verify the explanation. You might not have the time or energy to call the PSC or to keep going up the chain of command until you get a straight answer - or a solution. And that's not fair. It certainly isn't.

AirlineMeals.net has thousands of pictures of in-flight meals categorized by airline to help you decide whether or not to pack a snack for your next flight. Really, thousands of pictures of airline trays covered with whatever passes for a meal. Thanks to the site, we now know that a flight on Yangon Air from Rangoon to Mandalay came with two rolls and cup of coffee, and that Hindu meals don't stack up well against their vegetarian counterparts.

For the real airline food connoisseurs, the site also has pictures of crew meals - which look remarkably similar to passenger meals - menu cards, vintage meals, and behind the scenes looks at in-flight caterers and airline lounges.

Business Week sent a couple of its own "secret shoppers" to some Wal-Mart stores to see how their new customer service initiative was faring, and found that the employees they spoke with According to Verizon, being held to a high standard is unfair. Verizon will get a chance at the end of September to argue to Virginia state regulators that the state's dominant phone company should be held to a lower standard for restoring lost phone service.

The staff at the Virginia State Corporation Commission proposed that the company should be fined for routinely failing to restore service within a day. Verizon is expected to meet this standard 80 percent of the time.

On the same day the state said the company should be fined, Verizon filed a request to lower that standard. Verizon says it is an unfair and arbitrary standard that aren't applied to its competitors in the increasingly competitive telecommunications market.You know, it probably isn't "fair," but then again, life isn't fair.

To argue that a 80% service standard is "arbitrary" is just silly. Nothing could be more arbitraryReader Jonathan's iPhone just keeps breaking. The second time, rather than replacing it, they decided it would need to be repaired—and tried to charge him $30 for a rental phone.

He writes:
I went to the apple store today because a large portion of the touchscreen on my phone decided to stop working in the middle of writing an email. As a backstory, this is my second iphone. My first iphone had bad RAM or something and was replaced in 1 week after it would repeatedly freeze up and require a software restore.

The Apple "Genius" confirmed that it was a hardware issue, but that it would have to fixed at a depot which would take a few days. he then offered me two options: 1_ take the SIM card home and put it in another phone 2_ pay $30 plus a $500 deposit to rent an iphone while mine is being repaired.

I just sat there for a moment, then quietly replied "You're fucking kidding me." I told him that I flat-out refused to pay for their faulty hardware, and that I paid $500 for a phone that was expected to work for a year , not be fixed or replaced every few weeks. I wasn't getting a battery replaced, I wasn't dealing with user damage, I was dealing with faulty hardware which he had just confirmed.

I asked him to get the manager to waive the loaner fee. He refused as well.

So I immediately called Apple Care (in the apple store) , escalated it up a level, and went over four points:
1_ This is a hardware problem that is emb