What Happened to my Right to Privacy?

I don’t know what’s worse – the heat wave we’re having this week in NY or the rampant, intolerably low customer service standards of the new millennium. Or maybe I’m just having a bad year.

Not long after I moved into this NY apartment I started receiving tons of junk mail – so many different retail catalogs and flyers that I couldn’t keep up. I recycled them. I assumed that my landlord must have sold my information but never got around to asking.

As the months have gone by, the catalogs clogging my mailbox have grown exponentially. I think they even multiplied in there while I was away on vacation. So a couple weeks ago I decided to start calling each company that sends me a catalog, and ask to be removed from their list. This has become an almost daily ritual after checking the mail. (Some days I don't even check the mail because it's become such a chore.)

Yesterday I finally asked one of these companies – “Solutions” – where they got my name and address. I honestly didn’t think for a minute they’d tell me that. But I got lucky. The woman asked me to read off the special code in the yellow box on the back of the catalog, and I did. Then she said, “Have you ever ordered from SharperImage?” I told her yes, once. “Well, they sold us your name and address.”

I was livid. How dare they. I could not believe that a company I respected and trusted would do this without my permission. Especially after I paid them hundreds of dollars too much for an ionizing air cleaner - a necessity for us city dwellers who are bothered by black snot on our Kleenexes.

Amazon.com would never do a slimy, sneaky thing like sell my personal private information. I trust them. If Amazon.com ever sold my name and address, I would jump off a NY skyscraper because then there’d be no one left to trust in the retail world. That would be the end of online shopping and therefore the end of the world as we know it.

So I called SharperImage customer service to complain. That was a mistake. I bypassed the girl who answered and immediately asked for a manager. The young female twit posing as a “manager” had an attitude and didn’t really care that I was outraged, as I had calmly informed her. Her responses were monotone, canned, and totally without compassion. "I can't confirm that we sold your address." I tried to explain to her how I knew that they sold my address, but she interrupted. That only made me more outraged. It got worse when she started talking over me saying, “Can I FINISH talking?”

When I told her I was done talking with her and asked her to transfer me to her boss, her response was, “I AM the floor supervisor.” The rest of the conversation went something like this:

“I don’t want to talk to a floor supervisor, I want to speak with YOUR manager.”
“I AM the floor supervisor.”
“You must have a manager. You report to someone, don’t you?”
“I can’t give you that information.”
“Just transfer me to your supervisor.”
“I AM the supervisor.”
“But you report to SOMEONE.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Yes you can. I want to file a complaint about your attitude now. I'm done with you.”
“You can’t talk to me that way.”
“What way?”
"You're insulting me."
Etc.

This went on until she gave me a phone number to her corporate office and I hung up. When I called that number, O.J. answered, and it turns out he was just another customer service rep at another call center. He said there was nothing he could do because the evil customer service rep “is in another call center.” I thanked him and gave up.

To get some satisfaction, I wrote a nasty email to every email alias at SharperImage.com that I could find on their Web site and vowed to tell all my friends to avoid ordering from SharperImage. I’m done with them. I won’t even LOOK at a SharperImage catalog in the seat pocket in front of me on any future flights.

You really can’t find good service anymore. My next job is going to be lighthouse operator. Think of all the books you could read on a job like that – and no idiots to deal with.