I’ve used this space in the past to gripe about bad service, so when truly good service comes my way, it seems prudent to write it up here, too.

The week before Christmas (December 20, to be precise) my wife and I took advantage of our long-expired Verizon contract and a sweet deal from US Cellular (‘USC’ hereafter) and made the switch to become USC customers. I took a long lunch on a snowy Monday afternoon and we headed over to the location nearest our house to get hooked up. US Cellular was offering “any phone free after rebate” and service credits for switching lines from a competitor over to USC.

We had our eye on the Samsung Mesmerize (the USC version of the Galaxy S), but when we made it in to the store, they were already sold out. They called around and told us that there were a few left at the store across town, but the wait time there was almost 2 hours. Besides, the saleswoman told us, the HTC Desire is also a good phone, and you have a 30-day window where if you’re not happy, you can switch, and you just have to pay the difference in price between the phones. This seemed reasonable to me. The Desire was normally $230, the Mesmerize, $280, so if I didn’t like the Desire, I wait until they come back in stock, pay the $50 upper, and still get the phone I want. Sold.

Three weeks later we were less than happy with the Desires. (That’s fodder for another blog post, I suppose.) So, once USC got the Mesmerizes back in stock, I went down to the store and asked about the upgrade. Sure, they’d be happy to help me switch. I only had to pay the difference in price. Then the saleswoman (a different one from when we bought the phones in the first place) told me that the difference I’d have to pay was $200.

I was stunned. $200? How did they arrive on that number? Well, she told me, you paid $80 for the Desire originally. Now, the current price on the Mesmerize is $280. So, you have to pay the difference between the two, which is $200. I told her that it hadn’t been represented to me that way, but she just gave me a fake-sympathy smile face and said sorry, but it’d be $200.

I suppose I should’ve stopped to ask for a manager right there and then, but I’m lousy with that sort of confrontation. So, I paid the $200, got the new phone, and went home to consider my strategy. (Step 1: figure out how to keep my wife from killing me for paying $200 for a new phone.) Shortly thereafter, made my first complaint via Twitter.

Switched my phone from the Desire to the Mesmerize. Love the phone, very unhappy with @uscellular. Emailing customer service now.

Shortly thereafter I did a quick check and realized that US Cellular somehow doesn’t have an official Twitter account. They’ve done the Facebook thing (badly, IMO), but they have no official customer service representation on Twitter.

Hmmm, looks like USCellular doesn’t do Twitter. Guess I’ll have to complain through other social channels.

So, I went off to the uscellular.com website. I wrote up a few paragraphs to explain that I was an unhappy new US Cellular customer, concisely describe the issue, and explain what I thought a fair resolution would be. I’ll publish the thing here in its entirety. Feel free to skip it.

Dear sirs, My name is Chris Hubbs, and I am a new US Cellular customer. My cell phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. My wife and I switched two lines of service from Verizon on December 20, 2010, and added a data plan for both lines.

At the time of purchasing the phones, the Samsung Mesmerize (the phone we wanted to buy) was out of stock at the Cedar Rapids River Run store. Our sales associate called around to the other Cedar Rapids stores and let us know that there were just a few left in stock, and that the wait time at the other stores was almost 2 hours. She also assured us that we had a 30-day window to switch phones, and that we would simply need to “pay the difference in price” between the two phones. Since the posted price for the phones was $199 (with contract and data plan) for the Mesmerize and $149 (with contract and data plan) for the HTC Desire, we ended up going with two Desires, and concluded that the $50 per phone difference would be reasonable if we wanted to switch once the Mesmerize was back in stock.

Today when I went back to the River Run location to switch my line to the Mesmerize, I was told that rather than the $50 difference between the two phones, I was required to pay $200 to switch - the difference between the $80 promotional price I paid on December 20 and the full price of the Mesmerize. This was, to say the least, a shock. This was clearly not the “difference in price” between the two phones. The difference in the posted price between the Mesmerize and the Desire continues to be $50. While I went ahead and paid to get the phone today, I firmly believe that the upgrade price should have been only $50, not $200.

At $200 to upgrade, my wife, who was quite looking forward to switching to the Mesmerize, will not be able to afford the upgrade of her phone, and we are both left quite disappointed with US Cellular while not even into our first month of service. To set things right with our account, I am asking that you credit my account $150 (the difference between the $200 I paid and the $50 I should have paid) and then allow my wife to switch to the Mesmerize for that same $50. Those actions would fulfill the understanding that we were given when we originally signed our contract, and would restore some confidence in US Cellular’s reputation.

Kind regards, Chris Hubbs

Not seeing a lot of other options, I sent the note off to USC via their online form, and sat, less than hopeful, for a response.

Within 30 minutes, I had an email from Sharif Renno, who is a US Ceullar store manager in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He had no connection with my form submittal, but he had seen my complaint on Twitter, had followed my Twitter account back to my blog, found my email address, and contacted me directly to see if he could help. I sent him a copy of my complaint email and expressed my appreciation for his help. Then I headed off to play rec league basketball and missed a voice mail from him just a couple of hours later. He told me that he thought he had a solution worked out, but that he was working with a manager somewhere in Iowa, and that the other manager would contact me in the morning.

Kudos to to US Cellular manager @SharifRenno who saw my tweet and took the initiative to pass my contact info along to someone who can help.

That next morning I got a call from Matt Murray, who manages a USC store in Marshalltown, Iowa - still 90 minutes' drive from my house. Matt outlined a solution that would end up with me getting exactly what I asked for - the two Mesmerize upgrades for $50 each, per my original expectation. He apologized for the confusion and made it clear that he wanted to do whatever was necessary to ensure I was happy with US Cellular. The solution was easy enough; I would go to a local store and upgrade the other phone (paying the $200), then he would log in and credit my account to make it come out right.

One trip to a USC store, one email back to Matt, and 24 hours later, he had done just as he promised. My account had been credited, we had the phones we wanted, and our initial impression of US Cellular had gone from lousy to excellent. I asked both Matt and Sharif for their supervisors' contact info, and immediately sent glowing notes of commendation for each of them. I hope their supervisors pay attention. These are clearly guys who take customer service seriously.

So, chalk this one up as a win for social media. Not that US Cellular corporate handles it very well. (I finally got an email response back from my web form submittal about a week later: “It looks like this situation has already been handled…") It’s sad that they totally miss that social media path. Big kudos go to Sharif and others like him who take it upon themselves to keep an eye on Twitter for mentions of their company, and who then take the initiative to serve customers whether those customers live near them or not.