Just curious - what did the guy who originally emailed you have say about all this? Or was this who did all the damage? Anyway, keep us posted as to whether or not you are ever compensated for the damage. And if you’re not, please follow up with whatever pressing of criminal charges are available to you. I’d hate to see David (and his girlfriend) get the idea that you can get away with this kind of thing. WTF is wrong with people?
In this instance, maybe a case of culture shock.
Well, it happened again.
(Oh, about the guy who trashed the house - he eventually paid $3,000 for damages and I dropped the charges. Just like I told him would happen.)
OK, so my wife (Inna) and I have a bookkeeping business. We get contacted by a potential client and since we started a Google Ads campaign, didn’t think much of it.
Long story short: We got scammed out of $5,000. The scammer used a little-known loophole in ACH transactions which allowed him to cancel his payment after we refunded him.
We did the disputation thing for a day or three - contacted Intuit (we use Quickbooks Merchant Account) and Wells Fargo (our bank), logged complaints, talked to seemingly-supportive-but-not-very-helpful CSR agents, gathered documentation, etc. The usual shit.
Then this past Sunday, I decided to use the U-Haul approach (and my GOD do I have an update about THAT!). I put together a list of the top Intuit executives, from their CEO Sasan Goodzari to Kerry McLean (General Counsel), and about 12 people in between. I then wrote the following email, personalizing it for each executive:
I sent this on 12:46pm this past Sunday. He responded at 12:55pm, directing me to members of the Office of the President (OOP). I received my first call around 3pm from one of his assistants, and today, after a discussion with James Barrese of the OOP, the situation is resolved, Intuit is writing off the $5,000, and our merchant account will be reinstated in 2 days.
And yes, I have already received email confirmation on this.
Lessons:
- Go to the top. This was a $5,000 decision, I want to talk to the person to whom $5,000 isn’t really worth their time, someone who says “it’s worth $5,000 just to get this off my plate.”
- Make it their problem (“You have a problem with fraudsters”), not your problem (“We really want the $5,000 back!”)
- Tone, tone, tone. Keep it professional, remove the heat.
All excellent advice.
I am not at the same scale as you; but my country has very good laws about spam. I rarely get spam anymore, possibly (and hopefully) because I have been blacklisted by spammers.
Your point numbers 2 and 3 are, in my opinion, why they quickly clean my details off the list. I quote the law (in my case, usually, the South African Transactions and Communications Act, 25 of 2004) in my response.
Spam is “supposed to be easy” marketing. I endeavour to make it hard, a short angry, but polite email from me is going to cause some regrets in the marketing department of the responsible company.
I only rarely get spam.
(I have been full-on stalker arsehole with persistent spammers, a whois lookup on the sending domain has often led me to an actual residential address of the spammer (or group of spammers) and I have found a screenshot of a Google streetmaps view of their actual house is often reason enough to shut off their unwanted communication.
Normally, I start with asking nicely to be unsubscribed, but, war is war.
Good Job JohnT. Sometimes you don’t ask, you tell.
I’ve been going through something with the county government. I have been getting a ‘we are too busy for a YEAR’ The county destroyed a culvert at the end of my driveway. It causes bad drainage and ice problems. The road cannot be safely walked or driven on. I can’t get propane delivered in the winter because of this.
So, 7th phone call this morning. This bullshit about we will get to it is over. Now they say next week. The county cannot tell me what day. I insist. Well, they will call. This will shut down access to my house for 8 hours. I NEED TO KNOW.
I did say that I will escalate this if this is not resolved. I hate threats. But, I’ll go over their heads if need be. It’s getting ridiculous.
Hey, it sucks, I know. I also work for county gov (different county). DO NOT try to blow smoke up my ass. That will NOT work. Facts, just give me facts.
I was stern, polite and calm. Remember this was the 7th phone call.
IF you can’t or won’t do it. LET ME KNOW. I’ll figure it out. DON’T leave me hanging here.
Yup. Didn’t see this new email JohnT. Re my county gov/road problem above, well, I know the commissioner for our area. I HATE pulling that card. But if someone is not doing their job, it needs to be brought to light.
They have one more week, or I’m gonna drop the piano.
Excellent handling and outcome! I’ll just add some emphasis to your point about going to the proper level. I worked for a Fortune 100 financial service company for almost 40 years, and I can assure you that legitimate complaints to the office of the CEO were handled quickly with zero nickel-and-diming.
Go to the Customer Relations Department? Yeah, they have a budget and have to track losses. They’re not eating $5K if they have an out.
ETA: And the CEO staff didn’t handle, oh no. Someone on the staff directed it to the proper department with instructions to send an initial response to the client within 24 hours and final resolution (or a determination that it must take longer, with a follow-up communication to the client) within 5 days. It was tracked and nobody @#$&ed around or played games with them.
I had a similar situation a couple of months ago.
Some quick background; I had become a fan of the new Quantum Leap TV show on NBC (don’t judge me, and yeah it’s canceled now). I had multiple ways of viewing episodes, but the one I preferred the most was going to NBC’s web site to watch it in their web player, because it had no ads. I could watch it on demand through the cable provider, or on the Peacock app, but those had ads.
The only thing that bugged me was that each time I went to the site to watch it, it had me go through some hoops to confirm what my cable provider was, and that allowed me to stream the show from the web site. It was a minor inconvenience, but one I kept running into every time. I also, after a while, noticed that there was an option to create a free NBC account on their site on that same streaming launch page.
I figured that by creating a profile, I could establish my cable provider as tied to an account I’d automatically log into when I visited the page, which should let me skip all those hoops. I created the account while being careful to opt out of marketing email options. Unfortunately, it didn’t work; despite the new profile it still made me jump through all those hoops.
Oh well, no big deal. I kept watching the shows and dealing with the minor inconvenience from the site. Except then the NBC spam started. Of course I asked it to stop sending me emails, but it continued to do so. For months. I finally got to the point where I tried looking up how to delete my NBC profile, and found it, but the link from their site went to a nonexistent web page.
I was so fed up I went to the BBB and complained. I detailed everything I did, how I initially opted out of marketing emails, how I unsubscribed from emails I never agreed to, and how the option to delete my account was broken on their site.
To my surprise, the BBB contacted NBC, and then a technician from NBC called me on the phone. He asked me to clarify all my info, and purged me from their records himself. I amended my report on the BBB site to say that NBC resolved the issue, and they closed it. And I never did get another piece of spam.
I don’t often complain like that, it’s not in my nature, and it’s not like I lost money or anything. It was just an annoyance. But something about the whole situation rubbed me the wrong way, and by the time I got to the broken link to delete my account I was mad enough to gripe about it. I did try to keep my complaint factual and professional.
Very important. And take notes. I’m at the point where I’m becoming stern but of course polite with the county. I’ll ask them to wait for a second, “What’s your name again? I’m taking notes.” THAT will get you some attention.
I was a Canadian Federal Government employee for many years, and learned that if you were having problems with a government department that were not getting resolved, the two best things you could do were to write a polite letter detailing your problem, the steps you had taken to try and resolve it, and the failure to get any results, and send it to your MP and to the Minister in charge (with cc.s showing that you had sent a copy of each to the other person). Any Ministerial/MP Inquiry files we received got flagged for immediate action. Our senior management tracked every one and followed up until they were resolved.
Going to the top works. Just don’t do it as your first resort.
May I ask why?
If in a hypothetical situation I was burned by some deadbeat in a financial transaction, why should one not employ the most effective, retributive, scorched-earth tactics possible?
I understand that if one has a close ally in high places one may not wish to annoy him or her, but for an ordinary citizen, let’s say is the case.
Exactly. I involved my MP with a problem I had with Revenue Canada (as it was known then), believed I owed more tax than I did, thanks to an employer filing two duplicate T-4s by mistake. No matter who I spoke to at RevCan, I kept getting turned over to Collections, and I wasn’t allowed to speak with anyone else. Only Collections. Once I got my MP on the case, I got the non-existent debt cancelled, and I got a letter of apology from RevCan for bugging me so much.
MPs (no, Americans, that’s not “Mounted Police”; its “Members of Parliament”) can and do work wonders, even if they’re backbenchers.
If you can’t provide documentation of how you tried to fix it but it is not being resolved, you won’t get help. Contemporaneous notes are important here. On xx-xx-xxxx I talked to yyy yyyyy. You have to put in the effort, and climb the ladder. It sucks, but that’s the way it works.
To @enipla’s point, that’s correct. Note that my email had the internal Intuit case #, which the CEO’s team could have used to view the PDF’s I uploaded, hear recordings of the phone calls Inna and I made, etc. (I assume they did so, of course.)
Also, and this is important, my very first paragraph praised Intuit and spoke to my firm’s high estimation of the firm. And we do like their products and our ability to earn a great living using them - that’s true!
At no point did I say ‘you people suck’ or ‘Tamara didn’t understand me’ or whatever. Rule # 3!
Honey/Vinegar. Yes, folks are sometimes lazy or incompetent. But I believe most want to just do their job and go home. But road blocks get in their way. Things they can’t do a thing about.
Really though, what I’m aggrieved about, is lack of communication. I have plans too. A text or phone call would be great.
Yes, this is pretty important in these types of executive escalation procedures. If you’re letter says, “I’m never buying your products again!” then you’ve just removed any incentive to help you.
Much, much better to say, “I really like your products, but there’s this one glitch that the normal service representatives can’t help me with. Please intervene so I can get back to being a happy customer,” and then, of course, never buy anything from them again.
Don’t lay it on too thick, though; state the problem, and give your desired solution.