After a "ridiculous" six-month ordeal getting an ISDN line installed last year, Owen Davis and his New York Web-development firm Thinking Media decided to go public with their complaints about Nynex, Manhattan's local phone company. Within weeks of launching, Nynexsucks.com - "a site for fellow survivors" - not only attracted hundreds of other irate customers, but the ribald posting section developed into a veritable customer-service resource for Nynex.
But in the era of deregulation (and choice), the site added more than just screeds Monday, starting a new interactive feature called the "Job-Loss-O-Meter" to track the amount of business that Nynex has lost to competitors because of poor service.
Davis started the meter because, as he says, development of the new-media industry is seriously threatened by Nynex's near-domination of telecommunications in the city. "New York is in a position to take hold of the economic explosiveness of new media," says Davis. "If [it fails], there will be reasons why, and one will be infrastructure problems."
In addition to the postings and the meter, the site features a Nynex phone list (including the president's hotline), contact numbers for alternative phone services, and the "Acronym Game" for users to offer up their most scurrilous play on words, including "Now - You can - experieNce - legalizEd - Xtortion" and "New - York's - Never ending - wastE of time - Xpress."
As a result of the site, Nynex began responding personally to legitimate complaints and has started mediation seminars to engage the new-media community, says spokesman Bob Varettoni. "When we saw the Web site, we wanted to ... get behind some of the histrionics of the Web," he says. "They've been lively sessions, but the point is that they will be our customers and we want them to be happy." The company also recently made outreach efforts, including initiating a Q&A listserv and a marketing department specifically to court their new-media customers.
But Nynex has had a spotty past in terms of customer service, and last August utility regulators demanded that the company refund US$4.1 million for "deteriorating ... service." The competition in New York ushered in by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, says Davis, has failed to empower customers. While Nynex maintains that there are 55 other companies authorized to provide phone service in New York, Davis points out that many, like RCN, are only resellers of Nynex's lines or only service specific areas. Thinking Media attempted to change providers, but Davis says that RCN "wasn't ready yet."
Not surprisingly, customer-complaint sites have flourished in the anonymity of the Web. But while companies like Exxon and AOL have been pummeled online, the Web seems to reserve a certain ire for McDonald's. The McInformation Network, a group of volunteers in "22 countries and four continents" dedicated to compiling information about the policies and practices of McDonald's, even attempts to mobilize its activities on the Web. The group's the homepage announces the upcoming Judgment Day in the "McLibel" cases.
Customers are not the only ones with something to say at Nynexsucks.com. Tom Maguire, managing director of operations at Nynex, says the company's employees have recently stepped up in its defense. "People have the tendency to look at Nynex like the great monster and take swipes at us," he says. "But we're just 60,000 individuals who make up one company."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEEDmagazine.
