Do you know who I am?

There's an interesting debate over at Journobiz today about the issue of hacks receiving preferential treatment from companies when they experience problems.

If my phone service goes down, I could ring BT's customer service number and stay on hold for hours at a time, before finding someone who promises to resolve the problem but doesn't, necessitating a repeat of the whole sorry process the next week. OR I could call BT's press office, explain that I'm a journalist who regularly covers the telecoms sector, and miraculously see my problem booted to the top of the call centre's priority list.

It's a card I've played myself on occasion. When my Dell PC caught fire, the customer service department was useless but one panicked plea to the press office later, a courier was on its way to collect the smouldering remains - and a week later, my hard drive was returned, intact.

This week, my Toshiba laptop charger died, and I called GBC (Tosh's UK agency) to see if I could buy a new lead -  the original retailer wanted to collect my charger and laptop and take them both away for "about a week" for testing. As it turns out, GBC doesn't consider me worthy of special treatment - they didn't even bother to return my phone call. Tsk. It's so hard to be high and mighty when you can't even blag a power lead.

So I admit I've called and asked for information, or for help if I've got a problem I can't fix the usual way. But what I wonder after discussing the issue with some colleagues today, is how often hacks play the card of threatening to write stories about negative experiences, but quickly drop the idea when their problem is speedily resolved by the PR. Surely, if a story's worth telling, it's worth telling even if the problem eventually gets fixed?

From a PR perspective, it's worth noting that 99.9% of these threats are complete nonsense - the vast majority of editors won't touch this kind of story except from a regular columnist, and even then only if the hack can show it's a problem affecting other consumers. I also suspect if some of the outraged emails written by hacks were leaked, the issue might stop sharpish.

Obviously, though, if any editors want to hear more about my terrible, heart-rending laptop cable ordeal, I'm sure I could put something together...

Comments

[Wizard Bob]

Obviously there's no excuse for a PR agency not responding to a media enquiry, but Toshiba's notebook account was previously with Bite PR and is currently with Nelson Bostock. So you might have more luck trying them (toshibacsd@nelsonbostock.com).

[Sally]

Thanks for that - I did ask if they covered laptops and was told "yes" but perhaps that was a cunning ruse... You're right though, it doesn't take much to send an email, does it?

I actually gave up and called the nice people at John Lewis who will, presumably, collect my laptop on monday, test it for a week before concluding the power lead is broken and (hopefully) sending me a new one. But in the meantime, we'll have added a bit to the carbon footprint, which is nice.

[Stephen Davies]

I had a terrible experience with a well known telecoms company. Honestly, it was horrific.

In the end I lost my head and dug out some negative press coverage about them. I called them up and informed them that I worked in PR and have contacts in all the major media publications and began to rhyme off names of journalist who had written negatively about them.

It worked! I was able to cancel my contract.

Bit cheeky of me but honestly, I was at my wit's end.