Verizon’s Bad PR Situation: War Widow Forced to Pay $350 Early Termination Fee

This is where having empowered customer service reps –employees who can take common-sense initiative– can save your company a ton of bad publicity, and potentially a ton of dough:

After a woman’s husband died in Afghanistan, a marine felled by an IED, she moved back to her home town to be closer to her family and grieve. In the smaller town, she couldn’t get any reception from Verizon, so she called them up to cancel. Despite being a widow and Verizon not living up to its contractual obligations to provide actual cellphone coverage, they slapped her with a $350 early termination fee.

If you don’t have any coverage, you’re supposed to be able to break your contract without penalty, but customer service reportedly told the widow “Nothing could be done” about the fee.

Reached by CBS13, Verizon’s PR department promised to look into it.

via Verizon: Die Fighting In Afghanistan, Pay $350 Early Termination Fee – The Consumerist.

It’s pretty simple: usually the most common-sensical, decent thing to do is best. Or, you can have your PR people work overtime to clean up the mess.