All of a sudden I can no longer send email to my friend Jim at his Earthlink address. Their server is bouncing everything back to me. When I looked closely at the header of the returned communication the problem was clear: "reason: 550 550 Dynamic/zombied/spam IPs blocked." Well, okay, it was clear to me. Translated, Earthlink had decided the outgoing mail server I was using had either been hijacked by another server or was directly the source of spam.

The solution was really simple: get the owner of my mail server to talk with Earthlink to get them taken off of their spam blacklist. I was so mistaken. The solution was simple, but actually get someone to help me was not.

First I called Verizon. Over the course of the evening I spoke with three of their tech support staff, kindly recounting the issue only to be disconnected each time. All I wanted was someone to say: "Mr. Gates, I'm sorry you are having a problem. I will make sure the proper people take care of it." Instead, I was often told it wasn't their problem, but mine. It was a frustrating experience I've grown to expect with Verizon and other companies I rely on for my technical wellbeing.

Jonathan Grubb, Chief Product Officer of a new company called Satisfaction has just written an article called 8 Types of Customer Service. Verizon comes under his fifth category called Understanding but Inflexible Customer Service. Jonathan describes the type:

This is sometimes a hard one to spot. The customer service person listens to you, tries to understand your problem, acknowledges how frustrating it is, then tells you that the company is prepared to do absolutely nothing to remedy the situation... Online example: Verizon, where they will never ever stray from the rules but they will talk with you as long as you like.

Yes, Jonathan, that was exactly my experience. Each listened quietly while I concisely described my problem after which each expressed his regret that I was experiencing such pain. Then nothing. Which leads me to suggest to tech companies a few steps towards better customer support:

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