One of Murphy’s Laws is that everything costs more than it costs.

If you’ve tried to penetrate an airline ticket cost

One of Murphy’s Laws is that everything costs more than it costs.

If you’ve tried to penetrate an airline ticket cost…or a cable TV charge…or your phone bill, you expand that old saw: Everything costs more than it costs than it costs.

Companies that tell us they pride themselves on their customer relations seem to have hired the Marquis deSade as their director of communications. What’s more sensitive than a price increase? What’s more poorly handled, in so many cases, than a price increase?

I have a letter from AT&T Broadband. This company is big enough, powerful enough and supposedly astute enough to tell its letter writers, “Try to make our unwitting cable subscribers think this unexpected price increase means they’re getting more for their money.”

They didn’t do that. Instead of immersing the castor oil in a chocolate soda, they proudly put a huge label on the bottle. Customer relations? Hey, these yokels aren’t our relatives. They’re our marks.

The Negative CRM letter to me begins with sandpaper-irritation because it spells my name wrong. AT&T, how could you, after all we’ve been to each other? You have my ISDN line, my cell phone and my cable hookup, and until this letter you’ve been spelling my name the way it is on my birth certificate. Now I’m downgraded to what your computer thinks my name should be.

The letter begins:

Dear Herschel Lewis:

In our efforts to provide you with important and timely information, we want to tell you about some upcoming price changes for your AT&T Road Runner^™high-speed cable Internet services.

Beginning with your [they put a date here] bill, the monthly price of our AT&T Road Runner^™service will increase by $6.00, as outlined in the table below.

And on it goes, in that same tone, about as warm and fuzzy as a traffic citation.

What makes this an even more classic case of Negative CRM is that when AT&T took over Media One, the octopus didn’t notify subscribers. Many didn’t even know AT&T was now their cable company.

My wife and I were watching cable, clicking around to find something viewable. OK, let’s try the National Geographic Channel. Uh-oh! A message in midscreen says “You are not authorized to view this channel. For information, click ‘OK.’”

Huh? That “You are not authorized” has the imprimatur of the Vice President of Negative CRM all over it.

Clicking “OK” brought nothing at all. Infuriating! We’ve had what AT&T calls “Premium” service, and suddenly we’re kicked out of a whole bunch of non-premium channels. So we dialed the AT&T Broadband “trouble” number.

Busy signal. Busy signal. Busy signal. Ten minutes later, whee! A ring. But that’s no reason to be happy. Recording: “All service representatives are busy. Calls will be answered in the order they are received. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.”

That message repeated itself every three minutes. We heard it about 18 times, because we were on hold for 55 minutes. Great customer service, guys.

It became a challenge. Who would stay on hold for 55 minutes except two people who are either a) stupid, b) unconscious or c) furious? We claim “c” but also may qualify for “a.”

But wait, there’s more. When a service representative finally answered, he reaffirmed that AT&T had changed all the channel numbers and increased the price…quite naturally without telling its customers. The new service categories are bronze, silver, gold and platinum. If we want what we’ve always had, platinum service would cost $79.95 a month instead of the $75.95 we’d been paying.

But wait, there’s more. The new platinum designation included two channel receiver boxes instead of one. Since we have cable on three sets, we’d been renting two additional boxes at $7.95 each, so we get credit for one and the new total is $72-$3.95 less than we’ve been paying. And from his central electronic throne, the guy turned on the lost channels.

Does this prove that persistence pays? Maybe. We were lucky we stayed awake long enough to get through to a live rep.

Negative CRM isn’t limited to the stumbling world of communications. Try transportation. Try getting a straight answer about when your flight, listed on the board as “On time,” actually will leave. Try mustering a smile when the attendant says, with a toothy smile, “We’re sorry, but they didn’t load any soft drinks on this plane.”

Attendants gripe about the increase in cases of air rage. Uh…how about placing the blame where it belongs, on the causes of air rage?

We’re used to occasional Negative CRM from phone companies and airlines. But their accomplishments in Negative CRM aren’t as polished as those of computer software companies. These masters of Negative CRM charge for calls to their customer service lines, asking questions their inadequate instruction booklets answered partially, incorrectly or not at all.

I have an idea: Withhold payment. Then, when they call to collect, recite in as android a voice as you can muster: “Your call is important to me. Please stay on the line. Or don’t. I’m in charge here.”