Sounds crazy, but it's true.
Alfred Valrie, a resident of the Southern California town of El Sereno, had a couple of good ideas he thought he'd share with AT&T. A self-described lifelong AT&T customer, Valrie dropped a note to Stephenson:
You'd think an executive would be pleased as punch to get such a civilized note from a customer. Not Stephenson.
He referred Valrie's email to AT&T's legal department, which, according to a column in The Los Angeles Times, sent a response that read like this:
The letter was signed by Thomas A. Restaino, AT&T's chief intellectual property counsel. When LA Times columnist David Lazarus asked AT&T why it won't listen to customers, he got the following response:
That is, of course, mind boggling.
When word of AT&T's behavior got out, T-Mobile's hyper-combative CEO John Legere jumped into the act. Legere had his team create an email address, IdeasforRandall@t-mobile.com, that collects ideas for AT&T services and sends the best ones on to Stephenson. The Twitter hashtag #IdeasforRandall is also being used to harvest ideas.
"It absolutely amazes me that Randall would tell a lifelong customer to basically go away and talk to my lawyers," Legere said in a statement. "I interact with customers on a daily basis so I can hear their ideas firsthand. It's called living in the 21st century."
I sometimes find Legere to be a bit ... bumptious. But this time he's right. As for Stephenson, I think he should have to forfeit that MBA.