The following letter was emailed to me, with a request to include it on my site.
September 18, 1999
Brandon Johnson
5107 S. Blackstone Ave., Apt. 1105
Chicago, IL 60615
Jim Parnell
Regional Customer Service Manager
1931 W. Diversey
Chicago, IL 60614-1013
Mr. Parnell,
This is a chronicle of my victimization at the hands of TCI Communications, Inc., your employer. I am writing this to make you aware of the potential problems that a TCI customer might face. I hope that it may motivate TCI to accept greater responsibility for the carelessness that seems to be its trademark.
My wife and I moved from our old apartment into a new one on June 28, 1999. Before we moved, we called TCI to request that our service be discontinued as of the 28th. At this time we also requested service for our new apartment and were given an appointment for a service visit several weeks into the future. Between the time we moved into the new apartment and our anticipated hookup we came to the conclusion that we did not want to continue to receive cable at which time we called and cancelled our appointment. The service representative that answered our call assured us that we did not need to do anything else and said we would receive a small refund for the difference between the pro rated cost for 28 days of service and the full bill amount we paid for June. We hung up the telephone thinking all was well.
As we soon found out, all was not well. We continued to receive bills (one in July, one in August, and one in September) demanding payment for service that we no longer had for an apartment we no longer lived in! I called the service number listed on the bills at least four times and was assured those four times by TCI representatives that they would take care of it and that I simply needed to disregard the bill. By the third time I called (by now it was September) I no longer believed a word your representatives or their supervisors said. It is now clear to me that your customer service representatives (or at least the ones I talked to) are a most incompetent lot. I hold each of them personally responsible for the situation I am now in. I called once or twice more in September to speak with customer service supervisors. Same story. All talk, no solutions.
After all of this wasted time and energy on my part I was absolutely livid when I received a letter from Wexler and Wexler, your attorneys, claiming that I still owed TCI money for service after June 28th, service we never had (as we had closed off service in our old apartment and had never had our new apartment connected). I realized at that time that I would have to personally visit TCI and take care of the matter of clearing my name and account with a face-to-face confrontation. Thus, on September 13, 1999, I first went to your office on 54th Street and Western Avenue on Chicago's South Side and spoke with one Freddie Wallace, a most disagreeable and condescending woman. She called you and spoke with you but would not allow me to speak with you though I clearly had been victimized by your company and rightly deserved to present my case to you. She claimed, after her conversation with you, that you would take care of the problem. I am sure you can understand how doubtful I was at this point that anything was going to be resolved. If I had let the case drop at this point, I would have had no assurance that the situation would be resolved. Furthermore I would have had neither a meaningful apology from a corporation that had so blatantly wronged me nor would I have had an admission from that same corporation that their incompetence and cavalier attitude had actually precipitated this whole mess (I have yet to receive either of these).
Still seeking to redress the wrong that had been done me by TCI, I went to your regional office on Cumberland Road just outside of O'Hare Airport. By this time I had resigned myself to losing a day's pay as I realized that it would take the remainder of the day to deal with the bureaucratic cesspool that is TCI Communications, Inc. I am still very angry that I had to take a day off work and right a wrong that should have been resolved the first time I called TCI back in July. I still hold your company responsible for this! Verneen Breaux assisted me at your Cumberland office (she is the only person that I hold blameless in this whole charade), but she was unable to get through to Wexler and Wexler. Thus I decided that I would visit them myself.
I will put this bluntly: the staff at Wexler and Wexler reaffirmed for me that some attorneys still deserve the appellation "shyster." They treated me like a speck of dust. I was humiliated by the visit. At first, the receptionist, after calling back to one of the staff, informed that since I was not there to make a payment, no one would talk to me. I WAS FURIOUS!! Finally one of the attorneys (and I use that term loosely) spoke with me, but would do very little for me and informed me that if he found that the "debt" was an error he would send retractions to the credit bureaus. I would have to request a letter myself, however, as I was not normally entitled to one as the so-called "offending party." I could hardly contain my rage! Here I was, a casualty of TCI's carelessness, forced to plead my own case as no one from your company would invest the personal effort required to see my case to its end, and I was being told that I was not normally entitled to receive a letter saying my credit record was cleared of the charges TCI so recklessly had made!! IT WAS THEN THAT I REALIZED THAT I WOULD NEVER AGAIN REQUEST CABLE SERVICE FROM TCI, TELEPHONE SERVICE FROM AT&T (YOUR PARENT COMPANY), OR SERVICE FROM ANY OF AT&T'S SUBSIDIARIES!!
Mr. Parnell, the monster that TCI has created, by reporting a false debt to your attorneys, threatens my future. I was informed by the lawyer at Wexler and Wexler that my so-called debt has been reported to the credit bureaus. I certainly hope that the debt is easily wiped off my credit report. What happens when I go to buy a house or decide to buy a new car and the phony debt is still there, another not-entirely-impossible consequence of TCI's cavalier attitude toward my plight? Or how can I be sure that the offending false debt is cleared without spending my own money to order records from the credit bureaus-still more money and effort I have to spend to correct a problem of your making? Perhaps you could offer to pay for the credit reports that I will expect to see as proof that this matter is taken care of. I think that would be one small way TCI could atone for its utter lack of accountability up to now in this matter.
Your letter dated September 16, 1999, accepted no responsibility on the part of TCI Communications, Inc., for the creation of this situation. In fact, the letter was nothing more than a dismissal-a slap in the face. IS YOUR COMPANY NEVER GOING TO AKCNOWLEDGE ITS CULPABILITY IN THIS MATTER?!! Be assured that the matter, contrary to your claims in the letter, is not "closed." Until I receive an official apology from a representative of TCI Communications, Inc. I will make sure that people know my story. Because your letter contained no apology or admission of fault, I am sending copies of this letter to TCI and AT&T executives, a number of consumer advocacy groups (some of which maintain webpages and publish letters such as this), consumer advocacy reporters in the Chicago media establishment, and others who will listen. Mr. Parnell, you have taught me a powerful lesson-there truly is no justice for victims of corporate negligence unless one pursues it vigorously!
Sincerely,
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