Customer Service

136-acre development of luxury homes opens in western Howard Toll Brothers Inc., a builder of luxury homes, has unveiled Tridelphia Ridge. The 136-acre single-family-home community in western Howard County features four- and five-bedroom houses with two- or three-car garages. Customer-service award for Guaranteed Best Optical noted for customer service Guaranteed Best Optical, an optometry and optician office in Dobbin Center, has received customer-service honors from Valstar Certified, a customer-service research company.

Local resident Maura Schmidt McCarthy is opening a new wellness office, Remedy Wellness. Remedy Wellness is a new wellness office that offers an environment like no other in Harford County. It is an earth-friendly, toxin-free, gorgeous space that offers customized massages and skincare. McCarthy and her team take customer service to a whole new level in their comfortable, quiet space, allowing true healing to begin. Wellness grand opening is Memorial Day Weekend offering champagne and lite fare and free seated massage sessions (must call or email to schedule)

Margaret B. Tyler, a former Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customer service representative, died Aug. 5 from complications of dementia at Cadia Rehabilitation in Millsboro, Del. She was 96. The former Margaret Beulah Knochel was born in Baltimore and raised in Highlandtown. She was a 1933 graduate of Eastern High School where she excelled in French, fencing and archery. She was married in 1939 to Oliver T. Tyler, an aeronautical engineer, who later became an executive with the old Glenn L. Martin Co. and the Boeing Co. He died in 1984.

I cannot believe that our mayor or any other city or state officials would even consider allotting up to $25 million for renovations at Lexington Market ("Lexington's update," April 7). As a retired merchant with 30 years' experience at Lexington Market, I suggest management give more thought to painting and to hiring a good Realtor to bring in gourmet cheese shops and a French bakery. The market should also offer incentives and stop the beer and liquor drinking among customers shopping in the market.

Companies have added yet another obstacle to talking with a live person about a question or concern: fees. More businesses are subtly discouraging calls to customer service agents by charging for the conversation, as well as directing people to websites or automated phone systems. Some banks, computer companies, travel agencies and satellite television and cable companies are adopting this practice. Consumer groups worry the trend will only continue as companies look to cut costs.

Our power was restored late Monday afternoon - about 65 hours after the storm. However, during the outage more than a dozen attempts to get information from Baltimore Gross and Eccentric about their priorities and a schedule for restoring power were all unsuccessful. BG&E policy seems to emphasize public relations over providing customers with solid information that might help them cope. This bias is evident on the outage web site, in their automated reporting system, and, most glaringly, by their employee's inability or reluctance to offer any details about priorities and a tentative schedule for restoration in a given neighborhood.

You've called a company's 800 number and gotten nowhere. Your problem perplexes every customer service representative you reach. You've spoken with countless supervisors and still can't resolve the issue. It may be time to resort to the heavy artillery: executive customer service. Consumerist.com, a blog that popularized the phrase, has made a franchise out of tracking down those high-level executives and staff who are behind the workers manning the phone bank and often have the ability to tackle customers' most nightmarish problems.

The state Motor Vehicle Administration in Glen Burnie has expanded operator-assisted hours for customers.The hours of the Customer Service Center are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays.The toll-free number for Maryland, Northern Virginia and Washington is 1-800-950-1MVA; for Glen Burnie residents, 410-768-7000.Pub Date: 11/12/97

Dear Mr. Azrael:What recourse do we have for dealing with a mortgage that's charging late fees, but the cause of the fee is actually their delay in processing?We were recently charged a late fee by [our mortgage company], but my payment was not processed for over 20 days after it was mailed. It was mailed from Baltimore to Pittsburgh in late January and was not processed until Feb. 17, 1999.They charged me a late fee of $67.50. To this point we have not been able to get any help through their customer service line, which takes over an hour to get through at times.

Recently I had a great idea while waiting on hold for Customer Service. That's pretty much all I do these days: Wait for Customer Service. My call is important to them. They have told me this many times in a sincere recorded message. They can't wait to serve me! They will answer my call just as soon as they finish serving the entire population of mainland China. It's my own darned fault that I need to speak to Customer Service. We made a really stupid homeowner mistake: We moved to another house.

A Baltimore-bound United Airlines flight was diverted and a local family removed from the plane after the parents complained about the content of an in-flight movie. The February incident resulted in the passengers being escorted off the flight by police at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the family said, relaying the experience anonymously in a response to an article about air rage posted on The Atlantic Monthly's website . In a statement released to The Sun, United Airlines said Flight 683 from Denver to Baltimore was diverted to Chicago after the crew reported a disturbance involving a passenger.

Dear Whomever is in Charge of Customer Service for DirecTV: All I wanted was to watch the game. I was back in my hotel room after a long day, and I figured, what better way to unwind? Now, the game wasn't available on the hotel channels, but I've got that League Pass service you offer and one of its perks -- supposedly -- is that you can watch the game right on the ol' iPad. So I got out the ol' iPad and I fired up the app and I retrieved the password and I tried to sign in and nothing happened, so I called you guys and the robot lady answered and told me to OPRIMA NUMERO DOS if I wanted to conduct my business in Spanish, which I didn't, so I didn't and I said yes when the robot lady asked if I was a subscriber and I gave her my phone number when she asked for it and then she asked me to tell her what I wanted, and I tried to explain twice but she didn't get it, so I told her I had a question about League Pass and she gave me this long spiel about how I could buy League Pass, which I didn't need to do, since I already had it, so I asked the robot lady to connect me with technical support and she said she would and that's about when she hung up on me, so I called again and I went through the whole thing again and this time I got to a human being who listened to my problem and what I had done to solve it, expressed remorse, then told me to do the same things I had done, which had not worked the first time, and when I did and it didn't work again, this person...

The staff at the Aberdeen Post Office flexed a little extra muscle in December, above and beyond its regular holiday rush. Over the course of several days, a team of five employees processed shipments totaling in excess of 1,000 pounds – all postmarked to various military installations overseas. These packages contained an assortment of comfort items that had been collected and assembled by volunteers of an organization known as "Some SAY Support. We SEND Support," or S5. Members of S5 recently visited the Aberdeen post office to personally thank the postmaster and her staff, whose stellar customer service made these shipments possible.

Laura Neuman comes to the job of Anne Arundel County executive as an almost complete outsider to county (and Maryland) politics. She spent a career in the private sector, then less than two years working for a Democratic administration in another county before being named last week to a post that makes her the second-highest-ranking Republican in public office in Maryland. She has not worked on campaigns, much less run one of her own, and she is being greeted with no small amount of skepticism by the GOP. She could be in for a steep learning curve in both the policies and the politics of her new job. But Ms. Neuman, who met today with The Sun's editorial board, may also be the kind of leader Anne Arundel County needs right now. She comes to office in the wake of the trial, conviction and resignation of John Leopold, whose political and personal misdeeds brought dishonor to the county and sapped the morale of the government he led. Ms. Neuman has no association with him or with his opponents, and that may help her be seen as an honest broker in the process of rooting out those who were complicit in the Leopold scandal - an effort she has already begun.

Polar Bear Plunge Volunteers are needed between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. for the 17th annual Polar Bear Plunge on Saturday, Jan. 26, at Sandy Point State Park. Duties include setup and breakdown, registration/customer service, food and beverage distribution, and crowd control. Volunteers are also needed from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Jan. 27 for the "Super Sunday Sweep" to clean up and remove items left behind by plungers. To register and more information, go to plungemd.com . Blood drives The American Red Cross needs volunteers 14 and older (some positions 18 and older)

Deatrice S. Besong says it feels like winning the lottery: Her mortgage servicer recently agreed to reduce her loan by $249,000 next year, saving her $300 a month and erasing the debt overhang that has her owing far more than her house is worth. "It's a great feeling — it's a feeling of relief," said Besong, who lives in Upper Marlboro in Prince George's County. Her principal reduction comes courtesy of the national mortgage settlement, a deal struck by state attorneys general, the federal government and the country's five largest loan servicers after allegations of widespread servicing and foreclosure misdeeds.

THE WEST Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a seminar, "How to Give Your Business a Winning Edge with Excellent Customer Service," from 7: 30 to 10 a.m., Aug. 28.The event will be at the Holiday Inn Express BWI Airport West on Route 176.Ann Cunningham and Nancy Milner, customer service representatives with BGE, and John Jorda, general manager of Capitol Corridor Agency Prudential, will discuss phone etiquette, how to treat customers in...

AS ANYONE who has spent hours on hold for bad advice can tell you, customer service is not exactly one of the computer industry's strengths. For the Iomega Corp., it was such a sore point that the company singled it out as a problem in its 1996 annual report. After that came lawsuits and the "click of death."In 1996, Iomega stopped providing free technical support and started the highly unpopular practice of charging $14.99 per phone call regarding Zip and Ditto storage drives and $19.99 for Jaz drives, not counting the value of time wasted hanging on the telephone for what could be a very long time.

I long ago made my peace with the fact that when you call customer service, you get a machine rather than a human. It's OK, really, I've dealt with enough monosyllabic, gum-snapping staff at various service counters to welcome those polite if automated voices. But lately the machines don't seem to want to deal with me either — whenever I call a customer service line, I get a gentle but firm recorded suggestion to maybe hang up and go online for whatever help I need. No problem, but what if you're calling because your wireless connection has died?

Just over 2,800 Marylanders have received some aid through the national mortgage-servicing settlement this year, with nearly 2,000 others in process, according to the settlement's monitor . The assistance, valued at $224 million, ranges from principal reduction to refinancing underwater borrowers. The average rate reduction for refinancing? More than 2 percent. Five mortgage servicers -- Wells Fargo, Bank of America , Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial (the former GMAC)