Last summer, a customer service call with Comcast, in which customer Ryan Block tried to cancel his internet service, went viral - which many took as a symptom of widespread customer frustration with US telecommunications providers.
The combination of rapidly rising college prices and rapidly declining perceived value of their product has an inevitable result: widespread customer dissatisfaction.
Allstate, an American insurance company, noted that insurers had come to accept widespread customer dissatisfaction as a fact of life.
In a statement yesterday Mary Ellen Keating, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman, said the company had initially responded to "widespread customer outrage and disgust" when it decided not to offer the book in its stores.
Mauro Porcini joined PepsiCo, Purchase, N.Y., as chief design officer, a new post, working on worldwide design strategy for brands and products like Pepsi-Cola, Gatorade, Quaker and Tropicana, the last of which was the subject of a notorious redesign in 2009 that was quickly abandoned in the face of widespread customer complaints.
Prediction: widespread customer relationship management (CRM) Reality check: From the experience of the universities that we have worked with (Warwick in particular last year), CRM is definitely becoming the norm, and increasingly sophisticated.
Although Comcast has disputed the Philadelphia report - and chalked up Mr Block's viral call to the power of the internet - the widespread customer complaints couldn't have helped the firm in its negotiations with the government.
Compounding Ullman's problems is a widespread loss of customer trust.
Last month, amid a widespread economic slowdown, customers vanished and the ones who remained paid less.
Two weeks ago, two A.I.G. executives pleaded guilty to criminal involvement in what Mr. Spitzer described as a widespread conspiracy to cheat customers.
