What is the general tone of this writing genre?
It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul!
Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the
Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger,
his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less
tangible.
An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are
currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of
treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can
withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes
Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these
books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness ,
which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping
Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel:
thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about
the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The
Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking
help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of
seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide
poor customer care.
But then the Shopping
Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed.
The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama
or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of
material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely
nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably
judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the
occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life.
But the Shopping Avenger
also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul.
If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet.
(For the complete back story, see "Shopping Avenger" column and one.)
The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation
policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent,
B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: "Last weekend, I went to San
Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My
brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my
brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned
from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him,
so he didn't act on my warning."
B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened
already--"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The
store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the
front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet
been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in
the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were
lost."
B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping
Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. "Ryder had a truck
available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself
on being everything U-Haul is not."
The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call
from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide
trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to
note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying
that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their
business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere.
The Shopping Avenger
will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next
episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.
Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot
to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to
answer the question, "What's the difference between pests and airlines?"
The winner is one Tom
Morgan, who wrote, "You can hire someone to kill pests." Tom is the winner of a
year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the
Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's
supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply
of Turtle Wax?
This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal
readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest
Airlines for its "sterling" customer service. This brought forth a small number
of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came
from M., who wrote, "Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire
family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm.
And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags."
An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, "soaked
through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most
complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced
flyers have ever seen."
When they arrived at
their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, "We discovered
that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye
had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes.
Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To
this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters."
This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in.
Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in
that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so
I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem.
What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate
hoo-ha.
"The airline's policy,
which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires
that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four
hours of arrival at their destination," a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda
Rutherford, e-mailed me. "[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not
file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a
courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and
written inventory of the damage." Rutherford said that M. should have submitted
detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim.
Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day
at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to
other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:
"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the
airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at
the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the
ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an
hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our
heels.)"
She goes on, "I did call that evening ... and was
told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to
file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the
12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other
type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of
this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to
obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval
and left bags out in the rain a long time."
Southwest's response
actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. "Before, they had a
mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology
and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a
pissed-off customer."
Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping
Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought
the Shopping Avenger was asking for "policy information." The Shopping Avenger
e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer
Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the
plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the
Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of
U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of
retribution at its neck.
But then she came through, provisionally, "Yep, you
can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry
it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care
of it from here."
Stay tuned, shoppers, to
hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to
her for her troubles.
The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central
truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.
Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in
vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even
1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he
bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger
dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s
story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger
reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week.
When he called, he was told to "check back next week." When he asked if someone
from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went
by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his
television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, "Don't you have another
television in your house?"
More than a month later--after hours and hours and
hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television
back.
Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger
found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official,
was "handled perfectly." Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations,
assured Deputy Avenger Tad that "We got to be a big and successful company by
treating customers better than the other guy." The Shopping Avenger and his
loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does
Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy?
Stay tuned for answers.
And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic
rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out
if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the
next episode.
Got a consumer
score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.
Sorrowful. Academic. Ironic. Infuriated.