WIDE the PIKE

Corporate Stupidity in the Age of Information Exchange

Using the Blogosphere for personal retribution against corporate bean counters is a short but sweet time honored tradition around here.

We took on AT&T for their extreme insanity a couple of years ago and got over 200 AT&T customers to switch their cellular communications to different carriers in the wake of our exposure of their duplicity and corporate stupidity. The "World's Fastest" 4 G network certainly isn't but AT&T spends millions on that particular lie to entice customers to sign up for their expensive yet inferior service.

In that case I had bills over $4000 for a prepaid National Coverage plan when I placed calls on a trip from Los Angeles to Upstate NY from Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Dallas-Ft Worth, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville and finally Knoxville. After 2 years of calls from collection agencies trying to collect over 5 thousand dollars for those 50 calls on the AT&T National Network I prayed that they would take me to court to explain to a Judge how a bill like that could happen.

My new target is State Farm - the "good neighbor". State Farm has been my families insurance company for as long as I can recall. Since I was 20 I have had State Farm policies on every car I have owned making me a 48 year customer. In a time when 15 minutes can save us 15% on our car insurance it seems silly that State Farm would raise my rates under the following circumstances. But check this out

As I have gotten older I have availed myself of using automatic payments for every thing. My Social Security check is direct deposited in my bank account and everyone I pay regularly for service like Comcast, Verizon, & KUB along with my subscriptions etc gets their money without cutting down trees and sending out bills. So this past Winter/Spring I thought I had State Farm on auto pay. I did this because the agent moved from across the street to 3 blocks away and it became more convenient to let them take their money the same way  all of my vendors get theirs.

But it seems my new agent had an employee - now dismissed - who did not follow through with what he said he would do.

If you're like me you get a ton of unwanted mail and if you are reading this online like me you want to get your information online instead of in a dead tree envelope. The last envelope I opened from State Farm contained plastic cards stating my insurance was in effect on my 2 cars through September 19th.


In addition to the insurance cards stating clearly that I was insured thru Sept 19, I found a check from State Farm for $23.84 that I had never opened or cashed. I was not interested in anything else from State Farm since I knew my insurance was being paid automatically.

I received some mailer from State Farm about once a week on average _ mostly soliciting for other insurance _ and I was certain that any bill would have been for my records since I had arranged for auto pay with my agent"s office.

Turns out the person who is now fired failed to do what he said he had done and my insurance lapsed in June without my knowing. I had the cards saying I was insured til Sept 19 and I had made contact twice to set up auto pay so why would I worry about it?

BUT my insurance was cancelled and somewhere in the pile of State Farm mail was a notice of that fact - or so says State Farm. So they insist on raising the cost of my insurance by 25% from the $460 per year I was paying to around $600 because I was uninsured for 2 months.  Now that 140 dollars doesn't sound like much but I'm now trying to live on Social Security and it's a lot of money to me while almost nothing to them.

My agent has been great through this along with the folks now in her office. She acknowledges the failure of her former employee and has tried to get State Farm to do the right thing. But some BEAN COUNTER at the corporate level seems to think taking another $140 bucks a year from me is in the corporate interest.

Well I wonder if this blog entry posted on my many weblogs will make any difference?

I maintain websites for
1) my Holston High School Class - read by only a few 100;
2) My Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity Chapter - read by only 2000
3) A Genealogy site called Bozemania that won a web award as the best Genealogy Site on the web
4) A site dedicated to the Lady Vols Basketball Team
5) A political site called Rush Limbaughtomy that reached over 500,000
6) A very active site about Penn State and Joe Paterno that just hit over 1 MILLION VISITS in one year
7) A site for my University of Tennessee Class of which I was President
8) A site called Stories of the Road Giants - for other's in the Pro Audio Industry
and
9) A new site concerning my new interest in Forza Motorsports on XBox where I do most of my driving these days.

Add those to my very active Facebook pages for similar connections and my 1500 Facebook Friends and I'm able to reach a small but significant group of people. If my AT&T effort resulted in over 200 people changing their cellular carrier I wonder how many people I can influence in their choice of auto insurance??

Perhaps the BEAN COUNTER at State Farm believes that mistreatment of a 50 year loyal customer in order to add $150 to the yearly bottom line is good business - I believe all those beans counted have resulted in one massive BRAIN FART on the part of some clueless corporate stooge.  What do you think? Please offer your comments & stories of similar corporate blunders to the comment section below. If this has influenced your insurance decision I would love to know.

I am offering to publish unedited anything that State Farm wants to send me in response to this posting. I'm a fair minded person who thinks they should be given the opportunity to explain why they think it's a good idea to do this. I will give them 10 days to compose a response before I use my considerable internet experience to get this information in front of as many people as possible.

We are no longer powerless in the age of the internet. We can shine a light on what happens to us and it will make a difference in how "good neighbors" are perceived.