Businesses like to say that they are actively listening to customers. At AT&T, CEO Randall Stephenson apparently bucks the trend. The carrier's leader doesn't want to hear from customers, plain and simple. If you do contact him directly with an email, you better be ready for a lawyer representing AT&T to contact you. That's exactly what happened to Alfred Valerie, an AT&T customer that sent Stephenson suggestions on how to improve customer satisfaction. Notice the message, found after the break, included suggestions and not criticisms.
Here is what Valerie, a self-proclaimed “lifelong customer” of AT&T, sent Stephenson:
“Hi. I have two suggestions. Please do not contact me in regards to these. These are suggestions. Allow unlimited data for DSL customers, particularly those in neighborhoods not serviced by U-verse. Bring back text messaging plans like 1,000 Message for $10 or create a new plan like 500 Messages for $7.
Your lifelong customer, Alred Valerie”
The message was forwarded to the legal department of AT&T where Chief Intellectual Property Counsel Thomas A. Restaino took over. After thanking Valerie for being a longtime customer, Restaino refused to acknowledge any suggestions with this very official statement:
“AT&T has a policy of not entertaining unsolicited offers to adopt, analyze, develop, license or purchase third-party intellectual property … from members of the general public.
Therefore, we respectfully decline to consider your suggestion.”
An AT&T spokesperson told LA Times reporter David Lazarus that the carrier has run into a issues where customers claim that their ideas were stolen. That is why Valerie's suggestions were declined to even be considered by Stephenson and AT&T. It just seems odd that AT&T would do this when nothing legally protected is being offered.
Who else is in an uproar over the matter? None other than T-Mobile CEO John Legere. Team Magenta now has a hub ready for AT&T customers to drop off their suggestions.
.@ATT & #Randall are nuts. If they don’t want your ideas, we’ll take them! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #Uncarrier is about listening/improving for customers!
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 13, 2015
In case you forgot, Legere is constantly going after Stephenson and other executives in the wireless industry.
Really, don't email Randall Stephenson at rs2982@att.com. T-Mobile customers, though, can feel free to send John Legere as many emails as they'd like at this address: John.Legere@T-Mobile.com. Either Legere himself or someone from his camp will respond.
Source: Los Angeles Times
It’s reasonable to be very cautious when receiving unsolicited ideas from the general public for goods and services. A policy which discourages such submissions is a good idea, because such submissions could open the company to suit — even if, in the opinion of the journalist, submissions “contain nothing legally protected”. In America, anyone can sue anyone for anything, meritless or no.
I also think the headline is a bit misleading – ‘don’t e-mail CEO or you will hear from a lawyer’. Well … yes, if you are proposing services or goods to be sold, don’t. But I am currently experiencing a prolonged service outage band that has no commonality with the legal concern at issue.
Odd article.
This is why AT&T is Comcast of the cell industry in my opinion.