Yesterday afternoon, a reporter from the Boston Herald called my home number.

A number I never give out professionally. Because, you know, it’s my home number.

A number I have listed under my husband’s name so I’m not easy to find. Because even though I know that my stalker ex-boyfriend from the early 1990’s knows my husband’s name and our current address (pathetic, I know), the many years of dealing with him has left me in the habit of erring on the side of caution when it comes to privacy.

The reporter wanted to ask my opinion about the recent 8-week maternity leave ruling in Massachusetts. I put the reporter on hold so I could get Laurel settled with an activity while I took the call, then asked her how she got my phone number. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “I’m happy to talk to reporters but I never give out this number. I prefer that media contact me by e-mail, as indicated on my website. Can you tell me how you got this number?”

Reporter: “I looked it up in a database.”

Me: “I shouldn’t be in a database. This telephone number is not under my name.”

Reporter: “Actually, I looked it up under your husband’s name.”

Me: “Excuse me? How did you find that information? My husband and I have different surnames and I purposefully list the phone under his name so I’m not easy to find. I prefer to keep my daughter and husband as separate from my public activities as possible.”

Reporter: “We have a special sleuthing database that we pay a lot of money to have access to. It’s the same kind of database that background investigators and the police use.”

Me: [Envision mouth hanging open] “I find that really, really creepy.”

Reporter: “Oh, well don’t worry, you were really hard to find. I don’t think anyone else will be calling you soon.”

As if that was supposed to make me feel better.

Admittedly, as this conversation went down, I was: a) in a state of shock; b) still interested in conversing about the 8-week maternity leave ruling; c) exhausted and emotionally hung over from BlogHer; and d) having flashbacks of sitting at my college public safety office asking them to kick my stalker ex-boyfriend off campus if they saw his car on the property. Had I been in a more lucid state of mind, perhaps I should have refused to speak to her given that she clearly didn’t respect me enough to not violate my privacy. But I did give the interview. And she was actually very nice and we had a very pleasant conversation.

That said, this experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Whatever perception one might have of the Boston Herald, it’s still a newspaper. And in my lofty, idealistic world, that means that reporters ought to operate by a code of ethics, which not only includes reporting honestly and with integrity, but not violating the privacy of the people to be interviewed. I know I’m probably more stringent about privacy than most due to my stalker issue + my many years in academia and in HIPAA training, but still, there ought to be standards. I refuse to pass along private email addresses when people ask me to make connections (instead I ping person B and let them know person A wants to connect), much less pimp out private phone numbers. And even if I had access to some expensive database, were I in this reporter’s shoes, I certainly wouldn’t go digging for private information when it takes about 10 seconds to click over to a person’s contact page (which even has an easy to click to Media Inquiries section) and fire off an email.

In the past four years, I have been contacted by media outlets large and small and never, ever has one of these outlets found it necessary to dig for my home phone number via a private investigation database. In fact, just today I received an interview request from WGBH and lo and behold, they contacted me via the media request e-mail address provided on my website.

So Boston Herald, if this is the way you teach your reporters to roll, I suggest you revise your practices. Because sadly, yesterday, one of your reporters acted no better than my stalker ex-boyfriend.

I would say that in general, I’m a positive person on Twitter, more prone to happy and humorous conversation than rant. But the other week, after receiving a bill from AT&T, I couldn’t help myself. I tweeted and Facebook’d:

Right after I finish this peanut butter cookie post I am flexing my wrists to write a strongly worded letter to AT&T. #fuming

I fielded some outraged Twitter and Facebook responses on the topic then went about my business. Then, within an hour, I received this tweet from @sethbloom, who handles blogger relations for AT&T via Fleishman-Hillard:

@bostonmamas Hey there. Sorry that you’re having trouble. Would love to try to get you some quick help with whatever’s making you fume.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tweeted about a brand without using an @ and had a rep respond quickly, but given that AT&T seems like a giant vortex, I was impressed. I emailed with Seth and he was just as pleasant and interested in resolving my problem as that tweet suggests.

So here was the problem: during my press trip to the Bahamas, though I didn’t use my Blackberry for phone calls, I did access the web a handful of times, perhaps a minute or two at a time. I honestly don’t remember accessing the web 10 times in the Bahamas (I’ve always found the Blackberry too slow for browsing) but there were 10 roaming charges, totaling $386.23. Five charges were 31 cents or less; the remaining five charges totaled $385.31, an average of $77.06 per use.

My issues? First, the charges seemed truly criminal in the sense that the punishment far outweighed the crime (seriously, an average of $77.06 for a couple of minutes of usage?!). And second, it seemed bizarre to me that there isn’t an interface between Blackberry/AT&T to notify users about these exorbitant roaming charges, such as a pop up warning similar to the warning I receive if I accidentally push the Push to Talk button on my Blackberry. We did receive an e-mail warning from AT&T about international charges, but not until the third day that charges were incurred (which also was the last day of usage), which I consider a communication fail compared to the way credit card companies (who I certainly don’t consider angels) contact you immediately in the presence of unusual activity — in my case, the first usage was a whopping $166.32 roaming charge.

The point is, because of this poor corporate-level communication, consumers suffer. And similar to our dealings with Blue Cross, this is the kind of experience that leads consumers to feel alienated and mistrustful of a brand. The vitriol I responded to on the web about AT&T and other large corporations certainly seemed to reflect that notion.

Seth quickly connected me to someone in AT&T’s social media department (interestingly, not customer service) and in one short and friendly phone call my immediate problem was resolved; the charges were refunded.

And I felt of two minds about it all.

First, I was impressed. Refund aside, I thought, damn, this is why brands should be engaged in social media. I’ve seen lots of brands use Twitter and Facebook fan pages beautifully to monitor conversations from customers and respond. I’ve seen companies translate negative feedback into loyal customers because the company was there, listening and acting. (Brands fearful of engaging in social media due to potential – inevitable, really – negative feedback should take note.)

Second, I felt troubled. Yes, I got my problem resolved. I was lucky that Seth was monitoring the brand on Twitter around the time I posted that tweet, but otherwise how much of the resolution was due to: a) my willingness and ability to communicate my concerns; b) the fact that I was spouting off on Twitter; and/or c) my alleged status as an influencer in this space? I will always be the consumer who is willing to take the time to stand up for my rights, but regarding b and c, though the social media world seems expansive to those of us in it, the reality is that it is not reflective of the majority. Not everyone has this platform from which to speak and I imagine that those who do take the time to stand up and fight (blogger or not) meet mixed results in resolution, and the rest end up eating unjust charges.

On Facebook, my friend Sarah aptly wrote that it’s “so much more efficient for [companies] to simply address the complaints from people who can be bothered to complain than to actually fix what’s broken in their system.” And my friend Julie pointed out (in relating her dealings recovering funds lost by Bank of America) that, “People could cure cancer in the time it takes BOA to research money of yours they lost. But go late one hour on money you owe them, they seize your firstborn child.” I agree on both counts; I can’t even begin to estimate the number of examples I have heard of big companies demonstrating that they clearly are business — not consumer — first, with inane practices that clearly seek to take advantage of the fact that most people are unwilling or unable to raise their voices for fair resolution.

So what’s my point? I will keep on doing what I’m doing — fighting back in the face of each bit of corporate absurdity I come across. But I’m also now pledging — and I hope you will consider doing so as well — to encourage friends and family to fight too; to even help write a letter or make a phone call for someone who doesn’t know where to begin. Because as far as I can see, the only way we’re ever going to get companies to fix their broken systems is to get so damned noisy with our complaints that it’s inefficient to do otherwise.

Finally, two additional bits of information:

1. For those in need of consumer advocacy resources, my friends Karen and Julie both referred me to Clark Howard’s website; I haven’t had a chance to check it out in detail yet, but Julie and Karen noted that the site includes a support group, complaint letter templates, etc.

2. If you’re an AT&T customer: until that useful pop up warning feature comes for exorbitant roaming charges…I asked AT&T for resources on how to handle usage during international travel. They passed along a link for their info hub for international travel as well as links for these four commonly asked questions.

OK, so perhaps it’s just freaky coincidental timing (and a testament to Jon’s strongly worded letter), but a couple of hours after posting about our Blue Cross shenanigans, the phone rang, and Blue Cross showed up on the caller ID.

Admittedly, I panicked for a second before picking up the phone. It felt a tad big brother.

The Blue Cross representative and I discussed the claim. I told her that we thought it was absurd that we were paying $1000+ a month in out-of-pocket premiums, never go to the doctor other than well visits, don’t get prescriptions filled, etc., yet we were being denied flu shot coverage because the person who gave the shot was registered in another state. Even though we got the shot in the appropriate state.

She changed course and said that since we’re under a managed care plan, we would have been covered if we got flu shots from our PCPs. I told her that when I called our PCPs they told us they didn’t have any flu shots available for us and told us to go to a public flu clinic. (This absurdity is a whole other matter entirely.) We went back and forth for a few minutes. She said that next year we needed to go to our PCP to get covered, or to a limited care clinic such as CVS, which contracts with Blue Cross.

And then she told me she would make an exception and reimburse us for our flu shots.

Excuse me while I go pick my jaw up off the floor.