Letters To No One: A Response From AT&T

To refresh your memory, almost exactly two months ago I got into a spat with AT&T regarding a protective case for my then-new cell phone. According to the manager of the retail outlet I visited, the company did not accept returned accessories. They were, in effect, completely free from blame if one of their products caused another one of their products to cease functioning. Makes perfect sense, right? You can imagine how irate I was when I first heard that. I told the store’s manager I would not be leaving with the bum case still in my possession, so he took it from me and said he would send it to corporate headquarters to see what they could do. This was in July.

One mid-August afternoon, as I was dining at Aroma Cafe in Studio City with Nicci, I received a phone call from the AT&T store manager. He said the case had been sent back to the store with a notice saying they could not refund my money because the belt-clip was broken. Funny, I never removed the belt clip from the box, I just took the slip-case out and left the rest of the junk in my car. I asked the guy how it was possible something I’d never used had been broken, and he said I must have broken it without realizing it. I said, “Are you sure it wasn’t just defective? I never even touched the thing.” He said it couldn’t be defective, AT&T hand-inspects all of their items before they’re put on shelves.

So now AT&T was taking the stance that — not only were they above taking an accessory back when it impeded my phone’s ability to work — they were a defect-free company. Not one of the millions of goods they produced could be defective. Their quality control department was perfect. I told the store manager that I didn’t believe him. I reiterated my case, I’d purchased something from him, it didn’t work, I returned it, he said that upon inspection it was deemed to broken, and I hadn’t broken it…wasn’t that the definition of defective? He stammered and said, “I’m not going to argue about this with you.” I countered with, “Maybe we’d better speak about this in person. I’m going to come and see you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone.

When I walked into the store, he had the goofiest, shit-eating grin on his face you could ever imagine. I think he might have been under the impression I was going to attack him with a carving knife or a sword or something. He was so cloyingly nice during our brief encounter, he must have been scared of me. I again defined the word “defective” for him, but he stood his ground. I threatened to take my case to the state Attorney General’s office and the Better Business Bureau, and he responded by giving me the phone number of a superior AT&T person named McClain. He didn’t give me a first name, just “McClain.” “Call McClain,” he said. Suddenly I was in a Die Hard movie. I told him I was not taking the defective accessory home with me, and that he could hold onto it until I returned…to get my forty-three dollars back.

I called McClain and told him the story. He apologized profusely and told me that I should go back to the store and tell them to give me my money back. I told him he employed a complete fucking moron as a store manager and hung up the phone.

Upon returning to the store, the manager greeted me like I was an old friend of his. I wanted to punch him in the face or tear his throat out through his neck, but I resisted the urge and instead asked for my money back. As he filled out his refund request form and faxed it to corporate headquarters, he chuckled and told me a story about how when he’d gotten his new phone, he bought the same case I did and had the same problem I did.

It was at this point that my desire to kill the man was most-closely realized.

“Don’t you get it,” I said. “You’re validating my argument. You sat there for a month telling me I was wrong and now you’re making my case for me.” I don’t think he quite understood. He said a check for the full amount of the purchase should arrive in three-to-five days. It took closer a month, but the check has arrived and has been deposited into my bank account. Score one for the little guy.