rian Maier works at the genius bar at the SF Apple Store.

He accomplished in 1 call and 8 minutes what I couldn't in twelve calls, 2 divisions and 2 supervisors with the dreaded at&t: a refund of the obnoxious $1300 at&t billed me *after* I'd called them before travel to Canada to find out how to avoid heavy travel charges.

I'll spare you the gory details of my weeks and dozen calls to a&t which included a bevy of incompetence /possible lying, promised refunds, "policy" etc. But when I was at the Apple Genius Bar to have my hard drive replaced I told my epic saga of customer service horror to Brian who agreed to help me call at&t and see if they could do something. At the very least, he'd be proof that another company, at&t's partner company agrees that I did the right things and that at&t should refund the insane charges (stemming from email auto-checking in the background).

I returned the next day and it worked!

Please give Brian props and dj gigs.

This was truly the most spectacular customer service I've ever received: for another company's services!

Can someone photoshop a cape on him in this pic?

I've learned from this whole thing:

•The margin you pay a truly service oriented company is often made up for in time saved.
•People act differently when they know a third party is watching/hearing them.
•People act differently when a dude with a low voice calls them asking for something.
•Anything is possible

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.