> "Move on." - the catch-all phrase for this century.
The only purpose it serves in the business world is to let the big companies continue to get away with the crap they perpetrate on their "customers". Now a "customer" isn't someone that a corporation values, but rather the source of their income to be squeezed while smiling and taking about 'customer care is our #1 priority'. You can always reach the Sales department real easily. But try to reach Service or Support. [and here, of late, an irate customer who happens to use a bit of 'language' in describing his problem is told "I'm sorry, but I don't have to be subjected to this abuse. Good bye."].

Not that it is always appropriate, but I have found some cases where a proper call from the right guy that starts off with "I need to talk to someone in your legal department. We have a group of people here that your failure to fix a known problem is costing them x thousands a day ...

Funny how something happens after that. I made such a call on behalf of a group of businesses that were sharing a building with me and the power company was not "getting around to it" on fixing an undersized transformer. Once or twice a week the powe would go down during the work day for one to four hours. No problem, they were "getting around to it." and everyone said, "What can we do?"

I did not represent myself as a lawyer but simply called their trouble line to get information for a lawyer who one of the business owners was going to have contact them, if I got that far.

The question, "What number do I call to contact your legal department?" was followed by the explanation that we were preparing to do a class action and needed to start talking to their legal department.

Immediately the "push the customer away with "we are getting around to it, just wait" phone person put her supervisor on. He took my name and number and promised a call back in minutes by an engineering supervisor.. In five minutes ... I was talking to the engineering supervisor and then conferenced to the operations manager...

Within the hour both men and the district engineering manager were at our site! Amazing!

We had about 50 people twiddling their thumbs in about 6 businesses so we guessed the "employee burden" rate was about $3,000 an hour ... so we were adding up the hours.... and I got a feeling they had been down that road and had to settle before!

But most were just saying ... "there is nothing we can do!" NOT!

So, if you do your homework and approach some of the big fat brain dead corporations the right way, you can sometimes get their attention and get things fixed... but it is not as easy as it should be for sure.