Tom Waits is touring. Tom Waits, from what I can tell, never tours. As a result, this is a cultural shockwave level event for me, since I've been dying to see Tom live ever since I bought my first live bootleg CD of his.

So tell me, Ticketbastard, why I can only buy two tickets for this? I would like to take my whole family to see Tom, since we probably won't get another chance in this lifetime. There are three people in my immediate family. You have a two ticket purchase limit.

Your reason for this is to let more people see the show. "…to provide ticket access to as many fans as possible." That is, if the fans have only themselves and one other person they want to let in. No, I don't buy that. You don't care one whit about how many fans get to see the show–you're getting paid the same amount for each seat. Same deal with Tom and the venue and Tom's management. I don't buy that it's their decision because nobody on your end or their end gets hurt if all the tickets get bought out by one person–you make the same amount of money regardless.

No, you're trying to avoid ticket scalping, because you're sick of not getting fair market price for the seats. In fact, I just heard that you're starting to auction off the best seats so you can get the fair market price.

I just wish you had started with this one. I would have paid extra to get everybody into this show, but now I'm screwed. I could dive back into the ticket buying mosh pit and buy a third ticket, but that would doubtless be not with the other two and you've already warned me that you could cancel all three tickets if I tried that.

It's your site, so you people are the ones I'm holding responsible for this. I've never minded paying your convenience fees because you're providing a service and I'm accessing that service. I've never minded whatever other fees you've charged. I didn't even mind the fact that your site is so ridiculously stupid that it only gave me "International Will Call" as a delivery method. As long as you're offering what I want, I can choose whether or not to pay and that's up to me. Nobody forces me to do business with you.

But now I have to explain to somebody in my family that they're not going to see Tom Waits. And as a result, you're bastards, the whole throbbing lot of you.

Congratulations, twits. This will probably be the one time I get out of the house to see a concert this year and you've pissed me off as a result. So just remember, assholes: customer service. It takes so very little to make us angry, and that anger only increases exponentially when you have something that we want or need and we can't get it the way we want it and/or need it. And if you've set yourself up as pretty much the end-all, be-all of providing what we want or need, you better damn well have your act together. Or we'll just bite much, much harder.

The Consumerist has helped me air my vitriol, for which I thank them. Welcome those of you who wandered here. The place looks like crap, I know, because it's my personal blog. The real stuff is here.

Anyway, first off, no, I'm not a pornographer. Being a writer and a webmaster generally ranks lower on the scale of acceptibility, whether people want to accept it or not, because at least if I was in porn, I more than likely wouldn't really need to worry about $50, would I?

And as somebody pointed out in the comments on that post, the $50 argument goes both ways. Well, it does–unless you're the customer. The $50 is the tipping point for the other things that I mentioned: the lack of network coverage and wide variety of dead spots, the fact that I have to stand with my face pressed against the window of my apartment to forward my phone to my home phone because I know I get crappy coverage inside. Now, here's the thing: I may get out there in the big wide world of carriers and not be able to find a better deal. I may get out there and find that other companies are worse. Hell, I may, as somebody pointed out, luck out and find a CompUSA that sells them for the price I want. And you know what? I'd probably renew for a year and grab the damn phone to be done with it. But in the end, the $50 has still taken me from somebody who has said "Yeah, I 've never had a problem with T-Mobile" for years and turned me into somebody who'll…um, get pissed enough to write two posts and get people from bigger sites than mine reading them.

And what I find so frustrating is that it is so fricking easy to please people. I wasn't asking for the damn moon. I wanted the same deal that Bailey got. If I had been a guy on for two years and he had been on for seven, I would have understood and probably plonked down the $300. But it's not even that. The woman on the phone could have made some kind of effort to keep me happy. How about this? We can't reduce the phone right now, but…

We'll renew you for one year instead of two? Fine–based on my track record I would have renewed for year #2 when the time came anyway. They lose nothing. Here's a gizmo whatzit accessory for free. Fine. Let's give you the $50 back by trimming $10 off your wireless data bill for the next five months. Perfect. Any of these solutions would have worked for me. But instead, it was: you might want to make sure that other companies don't overcharge you and wind up costing you more than the $50. Well, guess what? I'll pay more for a service that has people who can think creatively and solve customer problems. Gladly.

Or here's an even simpler solution: she notated my account about our conversation. I asked, "To what end?" I don't think I received a straight answer. If we couldn't have reached a solution then, she could have notated the account, "Call this guy back when we have a deal that will work," and said, "Okay, if we get a deal that we think we can work for you, we'll call you. I've notated your account and flagged it." Or even easier, "Give me your e-mail address and I'll make sure you get promotional offers there. You might find one that will work for you." Anything but we're sorry to lose your business but we just can't give a fuck would have been nice at that point.

Okay, I actually wanted to tell you about a good customer service experience as an example of how to handle things, but I'm hungry. So I'll be back. In the meantime, my books are there on the right hand side of the site. Buy them. Then I wouldn't care about $50, porn or not.