[BC] Verizon-style warranties

[Rich Wood]

------ At 06:58 PM 8/29/2006, Dale H. Cook wrote: -------

>>A WARRANTY REPLACEMENT, VERIZON-STYLE
>
>There is a very simple way to solve problems like this, which we 
>have used with Verizon. Have your GM tell anyone he can reach in 
>Verizon customer no-service that you are a radio station, that you 
>are very dissatisfied with their customer no-service, and that 
>tomorrow morning every one of your announcers will be telling all of 
>their listeners ON THE AIR about how Verizon has screwed their 
>station, and then DO IT. You will be amazed what they will do to 
>avoid what amounts to extremely negative advertising.

That's exactly what we did at WOR when Verizon failed to install ISDN 
lines and failed to set contributor lines to rollover during a yearly 
Variety Charity Radiothon. Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow was the head 
of the charity and the host of the radio event. It was all on the air 
and embarrassed the daylights out of Verizon. It resulted in a 
$50,000 "donation" to Variety from Verizon.

At WJIB, Boston, we always announced which utility was screwing up 
our service. New England Telephone, at the time, would sell our lines 
and remove equalization and also had one channel going 44 miles 
father than the other.

Announcing these events on the air was extremely effective. So much 
so that the CEO of Boston Edison would call (he was a listener) just 
to make sure Edison wasn't the cause of the problem. Even for a 
monopoly, this kind of publicity wasn't good. Boston FCC employees 
also listened to the station. So did the Public Utilities Commission.

Never be reluctant to use the station to resolve a problem. I did it 
when Time-Warner Cable screwed up my building's cable service. I 
appeared as a guest on "The Dolans." The show was carried in a number 
of Time-Warner markets. I was given a number to call for any future 
service problem. It was the PR department. From then on I got 
one-hour service from people who actually knew what they were doing.

Rich