I am flashing back to that scene where Toto exposes the Wizard of Oz, long hidden behind a curtain, to be nothing more than an ordinary dude.
Don't get me wrong. In many cases, I do a lot of researching, negotiating and pleading to help both parties reach a successful compromise on consumer complaints. But here's the skinny: Some of these take only a simple phone call to rectify.
Even worse, sometimes it takes just one short e-mail. What follows is the latest batch of problems that practically fixed themselves.
James Panopoulos, a retired state worker, was ready to tear his hair out after signing up for high-definition television service with Comcast Corp. more than a year ago.
During that time, he's spent countless hours on the phone, had no less than six service technicians visit his Parkville apartment in Oak Crest Village and tried out seven different cable boxes - only to still suffer with the same problem. The 81-year-old said he was missing at least 30 different digital channels, including Maryland Public Television, all the local TV stations and the Weather Channel.
"It hasn't worked right from the day it was installed in June 2006," Panopolous said.
I e-mailed Comcast spokesman Aimee Metrick on June 25 about Panopolous. Two days later, the problem was solved, sorta.
Turns out, Panopolous was blaming the wrong people. He lives in a residential community that inserts special channels into the Comcast television lineup, which compromises the cable company's system. In Oak Crest's contract with Comcast, Metrick said the community is able to delete or move certain Comcast channels to insert their own community channels, which often causes Oak Crest residents to lose their Comcast channels altogether.
"Comcast has provided a temporary fix to the issue by helping to rewire the cable for customers like Mr. Panopolous," Metrick said. That means one cable goes directly to the cable box and one cable goes directly into the TV. That wiring "allows the customer to toggle between analog and digital to view the channels. Obviously, this is not a real fix to the issue as the customer is not getting the full digital experience on all channels."
For a permanent fix, residents in the senior retirement community need to contact Oak Crest management, which has ultimate control over the channels. Panopolous is temporarily satisfied.
Bill Behan was getting no such satisfaction from American Home Shield, despite call after call after call he made since March to the home warranty firm based in Memphis, Tenn.
The 64-year-old retiree from an engineering company had signed up for the protection plan to cover the appliances in his Delaware beach house, but was unhappy with the service he received. So he canceled.
American Home Shield promptly sent a letter to Behan's Jarrettsville home saying he was owed a refund of $72.16 for the amount of time left on his warranty. Problem is, no refund check ever showed.
"The $72 is not going to make or break us, but if they say they're going to send it to us, they should send it to us," Behan said. "We keep getting the runaround."
I tracked down Heather Wilson, a company spokesman, who then researched Behan's policy number. She quickly called back to explain that, "This should have been a simple, open-and-shut case."
Apparently, a check was sent to Behan's Delaware residence, Wilson said. Behan said he never received a check at his Delaware house. Nevertheless, Wilson said the company canceled that check and sent a new check to the Behans in Jarrettsville.
Behan received a refund of $78 on July 9.
"I'm not sure what the extra dollars were for," Behan said. "Maybe for our troubles?"
Louise Zajdel was troubled when she discovered that her 14-year-old daughter had signed up with free- webs.com to create a personal Web page, similar to those found on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
It wasn't so much the dangers of the Internet that made Zajdel flip out. It was the fact that her daughter had borrowed the Chase MasterCard out of mommy's purse to pay for the Web page she created. The cost was a whopping $399. (Uh, what happened to the "free" in freewebs?)
Daughter Dearest came to her senses when she saw the price tag and "clicked on the cancel button right away after signing up," Zajdel said in an e-mail. "So we have actually paid for a service which we did not receive, since the bill was due in May."
Zajdel tried calling the company to no avail. Then she tried PayPal, which handled the billing. PayPal gave her another number to reach freewebs, but an automated message said business is not conducted by phone and efforts to reach the company must come through e-mail.
"I fully expected not to get any refund," Zajdel said. "You know how it is when you have to deal with companies strictly through e-mail. You never hear back from anyone."
It's an all-too-common complaint about Web-based companies.
Leave it to this not-so-little Web site - based in Silver Spring, which was started by three brothers and has 17 million members - to prove us wrong. By the time I called Zajdel to get her story, freewebs had already responded to her e-mail and refunded her money.
This one I really had nothing to do with solving, so I just wanted to give freewebs credit for setting a good example for other Web-based companies.
James Watson, director of customer relations, said the service is mostly free but that Zajdel's daughter accidentally purchased the single most expensive service the company offers.
"The premium service we offer is for members who want an ad-free service and other extras," Watson said. "The service her daughter purchased was actually for the maximum amount of bandwidth we offer, additional Web space, free domain name and 15 e-mail accounts. It's way more than she needed. She didn't have to purchase anything."
Watson said that despite the widespread use of the Internet nowadays, many people are still confused by it, which means many end up signing up for paid services they don't need. Freewebs often refunds money to those who e-mail them about such mistakes, Watson said.
"We get grandmothers calling in saying their grandsons purchased something that they didn't authorize," Watson said. "We get adults who want to create a Web site and pay us for it. We tell them they didn't have to pay for anything and we give them back their money.
"Our philosophy is that if someone doesn't want us to have their money, we don't want to take it."
I don't know if everyone has encountered the same delightful experience with freewebs, but they've found a new friend in Zajdel.
"It restores your faith in humanity," she said.
If not humanity, then it at least restores your faith in good customer service. Bravo freewebs and thanks for doing all the heavy lifting.
Reach Consuming Interests by e-mail at consuminginterests@baltsun.com or by phone at 410-332-6151. Find an archive of Consuming Interest columns at baltimoresun.com/consuming