To begin, if you’re here looking for phone numbers straight up, the best resource to find most major retailers’ secret stash of hotlines is DVD Talk’s list found here. And in case they ever take that site down, you can find them at the bottom of this entry. And of course, you should always check out the site that is now synonymous with getting in touch with live CSRs, gethuman.com. (Although they are missing quite a few notable companies.)

We are still new, so bare with us if you hear us use the word “bust” one more time. This entry is about busting open the truth about call centers. People think call centers nowadays consist of a group of foreigners, sitting in an abandoned building in India– not true. Some retailers, manufacturers, and tele-communications still have a call center or two located in the United States. Not all, but “some.”

The trick to call centers, as many of you know, is to find the flow to get to the CSR asap. Gethuman.com helps you out in that way, so we’ll skip over the “how-to” portion of this post. Instead, we will help you understand how it works, which may stir up some creativity on new ways to beat the system.

From our professional experience, most call centers are run and graded on several metrics: customer satisfaction scores from surveys, duration of call, productivity of calls (cases closed in a given time period), customer complaints through other feedback mediums (email), and # of escalated cases (that’s when you move up to a supervisor or higher). This is important because it will help you understand the mindset of the CSR that is working on your case. The misconception that many people have is CSRs will easily do a CSA (Customer Service Adjustment) and not care. If your aim is to get a CSA, you’ll need good timing, a willing CSR, and plenty of diligence (it may take more than one call to establish your loyalty and the degree of dissatisfaction).

The structure of each call center’s process varies by industry. For example, certain products or services benefit more from a long-term relationship and therefore, the lifetime value of a customer is relatively high. These are the phone companies (AT&T, Verizon), cable companies (Comcast, Direct TV), creditors (AMEX, Citibank)and high-end retailers (Nordstrom, Bloomingdales). They are more likely to do a CSA because the cost of keeping you as a satisfied customer through a minor CSA is much less than acquiring a new customer. There is usually a cap on CSAs per year, but very few people ever hit that cap.

But the question most people would follow-up with is, “But the Customer Service Rep doesn’t care whether or not I am happy. They are probably as disgruntled as I am.” Now this is where the “game” part of Customer Service comes in. For companies that value long-term relationships, you can take either option: 1) if the CSR does seem like they care about their job, but they still can’t do a CSA and assuming the CSA is a legitimate case (you can’t just ask for money), you either politely threaten to escalate this to their supervisor, or massage their ego and have them find a creative way to get you your money back, OR 2) if the CSR does not seem to care about his or her job, position yourself as a victim and hope they have it in them to break the rules. We here at TB.com are not implying lying or fraud, but rather, we want you to have a fair shot at getting your money back. It may not always work, but it’ll give you the best chance at creating a win-win situation– the company keeps your loyalty and you end up as a satisfied customer.

Now, for companies that are hit-and-run purchases or services, it’s much harder to work the system. That is because they already have your money and as long as they are legally fulfilling their contract, you have no right to ask for you money back, even if it wasn’t what you expected. It’s a very tough battle to win so be discerning on whether or not that defective pair of socks is worth the hassle. Also, some companies are now beginning to track Customer Service contacts by individual, so it will be easier to identify “trouble” customers. We all know who these people are… buy 10 items, return 9. Price adjustment on every purchase. These high-maintenance clients are sometimes flagged, so be cautious about the amount of times you call the call center or make correspondence with the Customer Service Center.

Since several of us come with years of corporate retail experience, we always get asked if companies really read the complaints from customers. The short answer is yes… but with their fingers cross behind our back. It may depend on the company, but from our experience, the company will screen the complaints using software especially made for handling Customer Service tasks and/or it will sit in a database and only be recalled when someone needs to look a topic up. You may be fortunate enough to have a live person read your email, but this only happens when the company is small enough that is not flooded with angry customers. So if you think writing or emailing that letter is going to get to the desk of the Vice President, we’re sorry to burst your bubble.

If there is any consolation for this last case– when the company simply doesn’t care or you can’t reach the person who does case– the only weapon you have left is the internet. You can report the business to the Better Business Bureau and possibly get your story exposed to a larger audience, thus prompting immediately action from the company or you can be a highly-regarded reviewer/advocate on popular sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, and Digg.com. One negative review can ruin a company’s reputation, especially local businesses who think they can break rules because Big Business is out to get them. These review sites are your mouthpiece and if your collective voice is big enough, the companies WILL listen– small companies can’t afford the negative publicity and big companies have PR agencies/teams that will try and cover up negative reviews. If your request is reasonable, you should have a response fairly quickly.

We hope this long-winded entry helped some people. Let us know if you have any questions! Cheers!

- Buster Family

[for some perspective, this entry is written by Buster I, a 20-something y.o. male, with an income between $60-85K/year]

This entry will be the first of a four part series because there’s a lot of information to bust out and we need to get it all right. So let’s begin…

The FIRST thing you need to know about diamonds is that all diamonds, whether you like it or not, come from the same regions as other diamonds. We can get into the politics and trafficking of these stones, but we know that’s not why you’re reading… just know that diamonds, for the most part, are all similar. It is the Four C’s (you may have already heard this) that really differentiate these stones: Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carat. If there is one thing that you get out of this first entry, it is that all stones are the same!

The SECOND thing you need to know is that other companies, retailers, and wholesalers know this and error on the side of an uneducated consumer. They expect that the schmuck that walks through the door does not know anything about diamonds… or he may have quickly browsed through an internal article or learned a little on Bluenile.com, but that’s all. Hopefully, people can learn from us and other valuable resources out there and help you get the most bang for your buck. Those in the diamond/jewelry industry are very savvy and will surely capitalize on uninformed consumers– they will make their diamonds seem more valuable than competitors, even when it’s the same exact stone.

The LAST thing you need to know before purchasing a diamond is that there are options out there. There are the safe, reliable options with the established jewelers and there are other options with lesser proven companies. We do not know your risk profile, so we’ll try to lay it all out for you to decide.

Before we close this out, we’re aware that some of you cannot wait for the following entries, so we will give you a quick shortcut of resources that may tie you over for the time being.

Happy hunting!

Diamond Resources:

http://www.pricescope.com
The best meta-search engine for diamond estimates. While not all online jewelers put their diamonds in the their database, PS gives you a very realistic idea of what you can get and what the stone is going for in the market. It has a lot of good info on diamond pricing in general.

http://facetware.gia.edu
The ULTIMATE diamond grade cut tool. However, only use this when you are familiar with all the other diamond terms. This will help you get that extra mile out of your wallet. It will help you differentiate the average “could’ve bought at the mall” diamonds versus the “prettiest diamond ever” for the best value.

http://www.diamondcut.gia.edu/06_estimating_a_cut_grade.html
For round brilliant cuts, you can mathematically find out the cut grade (fair, good, very good, excellent) by taking the angles, proportions and other numbers from the lab report. GIA is one the tried-and-true gem laboratories. The other is AGSL/AGS.

http://www.diamondcut.gia.edu/charts/index.cfm
If you use this chart estimator by putting in the table angle or pavilion angle, you can guess what the diamond cut grade will be. You’ll see that the jewelers assign the “ideal,” “very good,” etc labels themselves.

http://www.niceice.com/cut.htm
A good resource that explains the cut of a diamond. The Blue Nile tutorials are very educational too.

Jewelers:

Blue Nile
James Allen
Mondera
Whiteflash
Union Diamond
Kay Jewelers
Zales
Tiffany & Co.
Costco

“a very low-priced, or even free, item designed to draw people into a sale, such as during Black Friday. As such, items being sold at a loss to the retailer are common during doorbuster events.”

A couple of us on the Truthbuster.com come from the corporate world of retail, so we would like to expound on the lovely concept of busting doors. We hope this gets you in the mood for a very, merry Holiday season…

In most instances, doorbusters are loss leaders (items sold at a loss or very low margin), but the retailers count on these to bring in foot-traffic or click-traffic (online) to their retail space. Now, if the Wal-Marts, Penny’s, Targets, and Best Buys in the world all let these people hit-and-run, their day-end sales would look horrible on Black Friday. But that’s not that case.

In our minds, if we’re shopping on days with doorbusters, we’re looking for a deal. The price is irrelevant– as long as there is a deal to be had, we’re in! However, that mindset is used against us if we are also the “time-value” sensitive shopper. If we come out of the store with “All-I-Got-Was-This-DVD-Player-Despite-Waiting-In-Line-For-Five-Hours” t-shirt, the deal may seem a bit unsatisfying. Especially now that Black Friday has come and gone, we can think back about the four hours of fighting through lines and piles of people for $3 DVDs.

We here at Trustbuster.com are not experts by any means, but we all believe there’s more that goes behind a great deal. The lines on days with doorbusters will inevitably be long, so while you might have that screaming $30 microwave oven deal in your hand, you’ll probably pick up a $7 t-shirt, some snacks, and a stocking-stuffer while you’re at it. So while your doorbuster might have slimmed down the margin, your basket size of additional items will surely increase that margin to something more palatable for the retailer. Hopefully, both people end up winning. The consumer gets more bang for their buck, but the retailer, by luring you in their space, draws more buck out of you. If you’re okay with that, so are we. We’re loving our new $1000 1080p HDTV.

And for those who like to play with numbers.  The average margin for an electronics item like an HDTV is anywhere from 10-20%, depending on the brand, life-stage of model.  Margins for soft-goods like apparel and linens are much higher… ranging from 30-70%.  Even if a retailer sold an item for near at-cost (i.e. cashmere sweaters for $10, 5% margin), your additional items of scarf ($10, 30% margin), microwave ($30, 10% margin), and DVD (ten titles at $4 each, 15% margin) will increase the average margin to a healthy 10-15%.  And since the sheer quantity of items sold during doorbuster events during Christmas time are insane (retailers often expect 40%-60% of their sales from Nov-Dec alone), the retailers are living fat and happy.

Care to disagree? Feel free to leave comments for our team. Until next time…

Being that this is the first of many entries to come, we want to set the bar very low. On second thought, we just want to set some bar– a level of expectation that we hope will be compelling enough for you to hear way we have to to say. Along those lines, we want to thank you advance for tolerate our often-misguided views of reality.

About the title of our blog: Truthbuster. Yes, we intentionally alluded to that popular TV show on the Discovery Channel. However, our mission statement is a little different: instead of busting myths, we intend to “bust” out the truth. Behind every truth, there are darker secrets waiting to be exposed. Sometimes, it’s funny, other times, it’s downright mean, but in every time, it’s more than what it appears.

And who are we? Well, we are a group of passionate individuals that decided to form a blog because we were fed up with bullies. (Although none of us are willing to admit getting turned upside down and stuffed into a garbage can.) We came together because a handful of topics turned our stomachs, so we vowed to expose and “bust” out the truths. We are all for the spirit of fair play to give the other side a fighting chance, so our wish is something constructive will come out of every entry in this blog.

Here’s one for the little guy.

- Buster I.