I’ve never thought of myself as an especially angry guy, but that is changing. I’m not sure if it’s the result of the recession or the political climate in Washington or a combination of many separate things but I am angry at how individuals (like me) and small businesses (like mine) are treated by the large corporations that are ostensibly here to serve us.
In the winter of 2010, is it possible that I am the only one to think that if I am paying money for a service, that I should be entitled to more than contempt from the corporation providing that service? Am I wrong to resent being nickel-and-dimed to death for services that I thought I had already paid for? Is it naïve to think that a paying customer should be entitled to a little bit of gratitude, if not loyalty, from the organizations that our dollars keep afloat?
My anger began last fall when the Eastside Marriott in New York City told me they no longer desired to have me as a guest. I am not making this up. My company has been hosting between 6 and 8 meetings per year at the Marriott in midtown Manhattan for almost 10 years. Even though this particular hotel has fallen on hard times, last fall, out of the blue, they cancelled the planned events we had on the calendar and refused to book any others for the future.
Why? They told me our meetings were not profitable enough for them to continue working with us, since we did not book enough sleeping rooms or spend enough on food or beverage. Now keep in mind that we are paying the rates that they establish, but I guess in a bad economy the rationale is to try and make money by screwing the few customers they have left. There is something wrong when a corporation’s plan to increase profits is to turn away paying customers.
When it comes to alienating paying customers, let’s talk about airline’s baggage fees. On a recent Continental flight to Newark I had to check 2 pieces of baggage, for a total of around $40. I was told this is to defray costs in a bad economy. Later, on the plane, a young couple who apparently could not afford to pay to check their baggage was scolded by the flight attendant for “holding everybody up” trying to find a place for their luggage. This young couple, paying customers after all, was scolded by the flight attendant like schoolchildren being dressed down by a nun.
Later, I was apoplectic to read in the New York Times that the millions of dollars the airlines are making from checked baggage is considered non-taxable income by the IRS. How do you like that? Free money. But in spite of this windfall, in-flight personnel routinely treat their passengers with contempt.
Talking about treating customers with utter contempt inevitably leads me to Bank of America. I pay my taxes grudgingly but on time, and last year some of those dollars bailed out Bank of America. They took my tax dollars, but in spite of this, or maybe because of it, over the past several months they have been systematically raising interest rates on our corporate credit cards, cutting credit limits and slashing our lines of credit for no discernable reason other than “because we can.”
So much for gratitude towards the American taxpayer. When BofA calls itself the bank of opportunity, I assume it is the “opportunity” to bleed their customers dry. It is apparently a lesson well learned by American corporations in the winter of 2010.