zlacker

Spend ~$5 of Google Adwords, and chances are you'll have someone calling you regularly trying to talk you into using it more - at least that's my experience. In the past it's been a pain to get them to stop bothering me.

If I have an issue with Google, I might try starting an adwords campaign and ask to speak to supervisors when their sales calls comes through, and see if there's an in along the way of "we would spend more, but you see you've done X that needs to be resolved first".

My other approach - not tried it on Google, but it worked very well on DHL and Uber so far - is to sign up for LinkedIn's premium subscription and use that to Inmail a bunch of VPs/SVPs and set out my grievance. My experience so far is that you need to find someone high enough up to be under the illusion - from lack of customer contact - that everything is well. They often seem to be shocked to hear that customers hit the wall, and get approached rarely enough that it's a novelty for them to help out (as such, it'll probably stop working if everyone starts doing this...)

With DHL in particular I got an SVP to get his assistant to light a fire under the customer service operation by telling them said SVP wanted to be kept up to date on how it went, and Cc'ing said SVP and me on the e-mails. A package they "could do nothing about" because it was supposedly on a boat back to the US, magically appeared in my office one business day later after it was located in a depot 5 minutes from my office (I wish I could say that was the first time DHL has told me a package was somewhere completely different to where it actually was)

>>vidarh+(OP)
Both are outrageously good ideas and I sincerely hope not too many people read your comment so it doesn't become blocked!

>>ramraj+o2
Thankfully these companies are big enough that the supply of SVPs and VPs is near endless. In fact, with DHL my biggest effort was wading through the list to find the people I thought most likely to reply. Of three messages I wrote, two replied and offered to help.

>>vidarh+Gb
I worked at large bank where being able to make people wait until end of day or end of week for a reply was a kind of status symbol. My wife needed to do physical therapy after a car accident and rather then letting her take an hour to do that her boss decided to fire her, all the paperwork was sent to London for an managing director to sign. My wife went across the street to a doctor’s office, got him to sign a medical leave application, and walked it to HR office. By the time the MD saw her termination paperwork she was three days into a federally protected medical leave and continued to receive most of her salary for almost a year. She could have worked a full day every day of that time if the bank had made the slightest accommodation, instead they ended up paying for a year of leave. :)