Here's what really happened.

So I hope you had a chance to look at that video.

Is there anything special about other special effects.

No it’s just like this.

It’s just me talking and it took me five minutes I did it in one take.

But what’s the result.

I posted it.

I think about a day went by.

All of a sudden I’m getting calls from the local manager.

The local manager’s boss the head of public relations people and corporate from many states away.

I’m getting calls on the weekends.

And there was anything we can do for you Mr. Walker.

Can we give you more.

Can we give you more money.

I wasn’t trying to shake them down.

I wasn’t trying to extort them.

I just wanted to be treated fairly.

All I wanted was a refund for the 70 dollar Kit and I got it and had got it like that.

It wasn’t some six week process.

If they want to give it to you right away they can.

Here’s what I think really happened.

Their goal was oh my gosh this guy is causing a problem because he makes us look bad.

He’s embarrassing us.

How can we shut him up because this could blow up on social media.

Now it didn’t blow up on social media.

It was only seen by a couple of dozen people and most of those were probably executives at Sprint.

So let’s back up a minute and walk through my thought process my thought process was.

Any reasonable person who heard my side of this story how I was sold a case it was the wrong case wrong piece of equipment I should get a refund would agree with me.

So I concluded that I really was on the right side of things.

A fair minded person would conclude I deserve a refund.

So the way I position the video is I’m thinking about not how can I really communicate with Sprint but how can I communicate with other consumers who watch the video thinking this case seems reasonable.

Wow Sprint’s really awful.

Maybe we shouldn’t do business with them.

So I don’t want to make it sound so complicated like Oh it’s three dimensional chess but it is a little more community complicated than simply communicating with the Sprint executives or the local manager because I am trying to communicate with the people they care about their customers and the fear of looking bad with their customers I think is what would motivate them to really take a second look at my particular case.

And in this case do the right thing and just give me the 70 dollar refund they probably would have given me five hundred dollars as a way of making up for the inconvenience.

I didn’t ask for that and I’m not asking you to use this communications tactic to shakedown corporations or governments.

I want you to use it as a tool to just help level the playing field and to help you communicate more effectively.

So more specific things idea I put on a suit and tie.

I do believe it’s just harder for businesses to discount someone who looks like a respectable business man and I realize there can be sexist and racist element classes elements in that but I did what I thought worked for me.

I happen to be an old man who owns suits and can look respectable so I put a suit and tie on.

So I wanted to look the part of someone who is a good customer.

Notice how I started off in a completely positive way.

I stressed I had nothing but good dealings with your company.

I’m a reasonable person I actually said that I tell them I’ve given their cause their their business thousands of dollars over the years which is true and they have that in their records.

And here’s the thing that most people forget.

I tell them I want to be able to give them more business in the future.

Now assuming for a minute that I was wrong in this situation I don’t think I was.

I just think a fair minded business would say here’s a customer that’s given us thousands of dollars of business in the past gives us business every year gives us business every month through the the Sprint service agreement is likely to give us thousands of dollars more even if we think he’s wrong.

Let’s give him the 70 bucks back just to placate him again.

I’m thinking I’m right but I’m hoping they’re at least in the worst possible scenario looking at it from that perspective.

So I’m incredibly positive I’m not cursing.

I’m not angry.

I’m not impugning anyone’s motives but I’m stating my case in a straightforward way.

Again all of this is because I want the PR people the managers the managers boss to be thinking oh my gosh she’s making us look like idiots because he seems so reasonable.

Most people when they complain I’m sure you’ve seen people at the airport.

There’s bad weather.

A plane is delayed and some passenger wants to scream at the hapless person behind the ticket counter and it’s not that person’s fault that it’s raining or there’s a windstorm.

You don’t want to seem like that.

That’s embarrassing for everyone involved.

And let’s face it when we hear I know when I hear someone yelling at a clerk it makes me want the clerk to say no go away and you’re not getting any refund.

I want to be the opposite of that.

And when you’re trying to communicate with a big company I think you need to be the opposite of that low key low energy but calm with confidence.

State your case and almost with the tone of a bewilderment of Gosh I’ve been a good customer I want to be a good customer.

I don’t understand why I’m being treated so poorly and what you’ll find is people will jump through hoops because they don’t want a reasonable person to look at that and think wow they really are treating their customers poorly.

Other issues involve the distribution.

I didn’t just email that to the manager.

I called up and asked for the manager’s boss got that person’s email and then I just went to the Sprint Web site looked in the press section and pulled an email address off of a press release and I think I found the section on the head of the press office and investor relations so I sent the email out for five different places.

Seeing everyone so everyone saw what everyone else saw.

And this actually went out on a late Friday or Saturday so I’m getting calls from people in corporate headquarters on a Sunday afternoon and they’re happy to come into the office.

Now I feel bad a little bit ruining people’s weekends but I feel a little bad.

I had to go to the store and call several times and get no attention.

So this is a tactic that I believe is extraordinarily effective when you are in the right.

You can’t lie you can’t make up things or at least I don’t believe you should and state your case calmly make a nice video.

Anyone can write a nasty Yelp review which by the way I think I did that too.

Oh the other thing I posted this video on the Sprint Facebook page so you can just imagine all the different buttons it’s pushing.

By the way I did all this in about a half an hour.

This is so much easier faster quicker than you know threatening a lawsuit and writing regular letters.

It’s quick and it’s easy so to sum up corporation big government agency anyone it has to deal with a large group of public has done you wrong.

State your case in a video is more powerful than just a text comment and then distribute that video on YouTube Twitter.

Yeah I put it on there.

Hey I put it to their attention on their Twitter account too.

You hit them on all their social media contacts and you email it to them.

You will get their attention.

You will communicate your message so I hope you have nothing but good dealings with all your corporate purchases.

But if not use this technique.

Very few people are doing it.

That’s why it works part of any great communication doing something a little bit different from what everyone else does.

It cuts through the clutter.