Dear Mr. Loyd:
My car had one of the defective transmissions. I called the 800 number and followed through with the other steps involved. Eventually, I was offered $365 settlement against $468 cost of replacement. I was very happy with the outcome. I had given up on getting anything.
Charles McCormack
Sturgeon Bay, WI
I was coming to a crossroads in my career. I had won a major Texas journalism award for investigative reporting. I was also part of the KDFW-TV station entry that won the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for "meritorious performance of public service by aggressive, consistently excellent and accurate gathering and reporting of news."
In addition to the awards, I was a well-known personality in Dallas/Fort Worth who stuck up for the little guy. I was touched when walking into an old folk's home in Dallas and having residents there start clapping for me spontaneously.
On occasion, the other TV stations in Dallas would send reporters to cover stories that I was breaking. Two of those reporters became network reporters.
I could get through to people on the phone like movie director Steven Spielberg and singer Charley Pride who had criminals selling unauthorized copies of their movies and music. Art Linkletter told me that he didn't know a con artist in Dallas who had been dropping his name in a scam salespitch. I chatted with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach who occasionally was a sportscaster at my station. I even had some Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders write to me for help with a problem I can't remember now.
I was 39 years old and had conquered one of the largest television markets in the United States. Yet if I kept up my aggressive reporting it seemed that I would be sued every year. I had survived three lawsuits, but how many more would the station tolerate? (I have been sued more often than Mike Wallace.)
What's more, the Dallas TV market is very competitive in a negative way. Fox News commentator Bill O'Riley was a young reporter at that time in Dallas and writes about how many people at his TV station wanted him to fail rather than succeed. There was some of that at my station, too.
Although, I had some good friends at KDFW-TV, it wasn't like TV-11 news in Green Bay where you helped each other, taught the younger journalists and rooted for everyone on your team to do well.
Personal achievement was everything at KDFW-TV where most of the news staff were single, divorced, or married without children.
I left Dallas in 1979 at the top of my investigative reporting career, and moved back to Green Bay where I could enjoy my family, have a long and stable career and walk to work. What's more, they didn't sue you in Wisconsin. (I thought.)
In 1979, WLUK-TV in Green Bay
sent a news crew to Dallas, Texas,
to do a story on me at the CBS-TV
affiliate there. Then, I returned to
WLUK-TV after being away four years.
Thursday
Chapter 12/Coming to a career crossroads
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I have a dell laptop computer with a warranty that expires Oct of 2009. I called for service and I waited an unusually long time, 45 min to have a live conversation while listening to announcement of how I could be better served by using Dell's website. If I could get on my computer I won't be calling them as that was the problem. When I mentioned the long wait time only to talk with someone who, once again, I could not understand which is a problem that gets worse as I get older they offered me another warranty on top of the one I already have for $149 for a year of getting a two minute or less response time and be able to talk to someone in the American center. What kind of a scam is this. Dell can't fulfil their warranty obligations so they want you to pay more for a service you should already be getting. Do people actually pay this? What ever happened to be able to buy a product that is expected to perform wihout buying additional warranties and when that additional warranty doesn't work they'll sell you another one with promises of better service.
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