Don’t Email AT&T’s CEO: You Might Get Sued

When you write an email to Steve Jobs, he’ll sometimes write you back a letter with the answers to your questions. “>Write a letter to AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson, though, and what do you get? A threat of a cease-and-desist, as Girogio Galante found out.

The exchange was prompted by a slightly miffed but non-threatening email to Stephenson in regards to AT&T’s new data rates, in which Galante threatened to leave AT&T for Sprint. His email closed with the line: “Please don’t have one of your $12/hour “Executive Relations” college students call me – I’ve found them to be generally poorly informed… and they have little  authority to do anything sensible.”

Yet it was one of those very same “$12/Hour ‘Executive Relations’ college students” who called Giorgio. His name was Brent, and after calling Giorgio to “thank him” for the feedback, but while this “college student” may not have been authorized to do anything “sensible,” he was apparently authorized to threaten Galante with legal action if he ever dared to email AT&T’s CEO again.

Could anything better exemplify AT&T’s total contempt for their customers? If you write Steve Jobs, you might have a heated exchange with him, but at least he’s listening. Just attempting to communicate with AT&T, though, is enough to get you potentially sued. What dicks.

John Brownlee

John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.